8:30am Friday 21st November 2008
By Matt Smith
HAMPSHIRE councillors have voted themselves pay rises in the face of an independent report which found they were poor value for the local taxpayer.
All councillors will get a 2.45 per cent rise on their basic £11,565 allowance, taking it to £11,848, backdated to April.
The allowances for the leader and his Cabinet members will shoot up by 25 per cent over the next four years.
It would mean Ken Thornber’s eligible allowance for leader of the council would go up from £27,913 to £34,695.
Members of his Cabinet would see their allowances rise from £16,747 to £20,817.
Councillors also refused to cut their 53.5p mileage rate to 40p unless employees did the same.
An independent pay panel report had recommended the county’s hefty allowance bill should be cut by £108,000. But before the report even entered the council chamber for consideration 16 of its 42 recommendations had been dismissed by a governance committee.
Councillors rejected its recommendation to strip opposition spokesmen of committee allowances or cut certain “special responsibility” allowances, such as for the chairman of the council – a largely “ceremonial role”.
Only one of the special allowances was axed – the £2,797 paid to the council’s “eChampion” – and another was reduced. The independent chairman of the standards committee will get £1,950 instead of £5,583.
Council leader Ken Thornber claimed councillors were paid between £7 to £9 an hour after tax and told them: “Take pride in the fact you are value for money.”
Lib Dem leader Adrian Collett challenged Cllr Thornber to freeze the proposed rise to his allowance and those of his Cabinet.
Councillor Thornber refused to overrule the “collective wisdom”
of fellow councillors who agreed in a secret survey that the roles were underpaid.
However, he said it was a “personal choice” whether the pay rises were taken and he repeated that he would not do so.
Christine Melsom, from IsItFair?, a council tax reform group, had called on councillors to restrain themselves.
She said: “In the light of the financial situation of this country they have actually not taken any notice of what the independent remuneration panel have said.
“The public cannot afford these rises. It’s now got to the stage where they are earning a good salary. It’s more than some of them could earn in the outside world.”
Mrs Melsom also called for more accountability from councillors.
Cllr Thornber has said that, while he was not legally allowed to dock pay for poor attendance, he would propose publishing a register, from April.
He has also promised a vote to cut mileage allowances when the new council is voted in next May.
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