Councillors in Bury are set to see their allowances rise by more than 20 percent. If agreed by the council later this week, recommendations put forward by an independent remuneration panel will see each of the 51 councillors receive a basic allowance of £10,791 per year, up from £8,947 in 2021/22.
Councillors with special responsibilities will also see their allowances rise if the measures are voted through by the council at the annual general meeting on Wednesday, May 25. Leader of the council, labour’s Eamonn O’Brien will see his special responsibility additional allowance jump from £25,503 per year to £32,733.
The deputy leader of the council’s allowance will rise to £19,424 from £15,307 while the Conservative opposition leader Russell Bernstein will see his additional allowance increase to £10,683 from the previous figure of £8,418.
Labour cabinet members will receive an increase of more than 40 per cent with the new allowance set at £14,568 up from £10,202.
If adopted, the annual cost of the uplifted allowance scheme is estimated at £788,699 for the next 12 months. The independent panel, who reviewed allowances late in 2021, concluded that Bury Council had ‘a low paying scheme both comparatively and in real terms’.
They said ‘the generally low level of allowances had not been reviewed at all for more than 11 years’.
The report to councillors added: “The panel received anecdotal evidence that the current level of allowances was acting as a barrier to the recruitment of a wide range of candidates to stand for council.
"While the basic allowance and special responsibility allowances were never intended to reflect the ‘market value’ of the workload and responsibilities undertaken by members, they are intended to go a large way to recognising that there is a substantial time commitment and complexity to being an elected member that is largely unrecognised in their current remuneration.”
The three members of the independent panel appointed to look into allowances were chair Dr Declan Hall, an independent consultant specialising in members’ allowances and a former lecturer in local government and politics, Dr Andrew Roberts, a businessman and who is managing director of a local IT company and chair of Bury Business Leaders Group and John Thomson, a UNISON Bury branch secretary.
Their report said: “Benchmarking shows that the Bury allowances are the lowest or next to lowest in every category across all of Greater Manchester.”
The report to councillors said that the recommendations for the new allowances scheme had been put forward following consultation with the group leaders, the Mayor and the standards committee of the council.
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