Agenda item

REVIEW OF MEMBERS' ALLOWANCES SCHEME

REPORT OF THE DEMOCRATIC SERVICES MANAGER

To agree the Member’s Allowances Scheme 2023/2024 having taken into account the recommendations of the Independent Remuneration Panel.

Decision:

RESOLVED: That Council:

(1) Considered the report and recommendations of the IRP, as attached as Appendix A of the submitted report.

(2) Agreed the Members’ Allowances Scheme for 2023/2024 as set out in Appendix B of the submitted report, subject to the removal to restrict to only one Special Responsibility Allowance.

(3) Agreed the increase to the Independent Person and Reserve Independent Persons allowances as detailed in 4.9 of Appendix A and 8.11 of this report.

(4) Agreed the allowance to the Independent Non-Voting Member on the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee as detailed in 4.7 of Appendix A and 8.12 of this report.

(5) Expressed appreciation to the IRP for their work over the last 4 years.

REASON FOR DECISIONS: To ensure that the Council meets its statutory requirements of an annual review and adoption of the scheme.

Minutes:

Audio recording – 114 minutes 49 seconds

The Democratic Services Manager presented the report and advised of the following:

· The report detailed the updated annual scheme to be approved for the following financial year, considering the recommendations of the Independent Renumeration Panel (IRP).

· The main recommendation was to increase the Basic Allowance by 6%.

· This increase had also been applied to the non-voting Independent Member of Finance, Audit and Risk Committee, as well as the Independent Person and Reserves of the Standards Committee.

· It had also been applied to the Chair and Vice Chair of Council.

· The IRP had advised that the Special Responsibility Allowance should be capped to one per Member.

· There had not been an increase in the Members Basic Allowance for two years and it was preferred by the IRP to make smaller, more frequent increases rather than one-off large increases.

Councillor Elizabeth Dennis-Harburg proposed and noted:

· The report was self explanatory and the Appendix A sets out the questions which were considered by the Independent Renumeration Panel in producing these proposals.

· There was a need to do everything to promote equality and get better representation of the communities in the District.

· This authority had consistently held back on raising allowances previously.

This was seconded by Councillor Ruth Brown.

Councillor Tom Tyson proposed an amendment to the motion - to remove the restriction on the Special Responsibility Allowances to only one per Member and highlighted:

· This was a solution in search of a problem, as there was no demonstrable evidence of Members hoarding responsibilities.

· Refusing to pay SRAs for the role conducted was ethically wrong and would punish Members for taking on additional responsibilities.

· It could lead to a situation where a Member was Chair of two Committees, but would effectively only be paid for one of these roles.

This amendment was seconded by Councillor Steve Jarvis, and following a vote, the amendment was agreed.

The Democratic Services Manager noted an error in the appendix and the Leader of the Council payment should be £15,137, not £154,137 as it might appear.

Having been proposed by Councillor Dennis-Harburg and seconded by Councillor Brown, following a vote, the motion, as amended, was: