I'm Sticking My Snout Back In The Trough!

Last week, I returned from a short Easter break to find a letter from the Council waiting for me. It was from the Borough’s Returning Officer informing me that my nomination to be a candidate in May’s local elections had been accepted. If I am re-elected for Labour in New Cross Ward and serve a full term, that will mean that by 2018, I would have been a Councillor continuously for 20 years. This will make me one of the ‘Old Lags’, as a fellow councillor puts it, which I take to be a term of ‘endearment’ used to describe the longest-serving Councillors.

We are constantly reminded that when it comes to popularity and public respect, politicians, like Cardiff City, are struggling at the foot of the table. This is a position we share with estate agents and probably bankers. I am not sure if people had their local councillors in mind when they offered this judgement to the pollsters. I would guess that most people don’t think about the fact that they have a local councillor. By and large people don’t know who their Councillors are. Plus they tend not to vote for them. Turnout in the Deptford constituency in the 2010 General election was 62.1%. Most wards across the Borough struggled to achieve half that in 2006, with some seeing turnout languishing below 25%. Yet following the expenses scandal that engulfed Parliament in 2008 and has simmered away quietly ever since, the public have shown a tendency to tar us all with the same brush. I think many of us have experienced the attitude, particularly when out campaigning, that we are only interested in being elected to the Council to feather our own nest, because the salaries are so high and the allowances so generous.

Whilst doing a bit of de-cluttering at home before the builders came in the other week, I found a copy of The Report of the Independent Panel on The Remuneration of Councillors in London. The panel, chaired by Professor Malcolm Grant, published this report in February 1999, having been asked to look into the issue by the Association of London Government in December 1998. The recommendations were broadly adopted and formed the basis of the Members’ Allowance schemes introduced by London Boroughs and operated to this day. There are a few key points I would draw attention to:

• They found that the average councillor spends over 80 hours a week on the job. 
• They believed this was too much and should be reduced to 60 hours a month. 
• The believed that the first 20 hours that councillors devote to their role should be considered voluntary, to reflect the element of public service involved in being a councillor. They, therefore, thought that this time should not be remunerated. 
• They recommended that the remaining 40 hours should be paid for at the mean London white collar wage. They believed that at the time, this implied a standard backbench allowance of £7,500 per annum. (This has grown over time so that in Lewisham it currently stands at £9,812). 
• Extra allowances should be paid to those councillors with additional responsibilities which require them to spend more time on their duties than allowed for in the 60 hours covered by the basic allowance. 

Lewisham’s scheme of allowances can be seen here. There is a column in the table that records the expenses that Councillors have claimed. In 2012-13 the Mayor and elected Members claimed £655.91. That’s altogether. That’s an average claim of less that £12 per individual. Councillors have also recently been expelled by Eric Pickles from their Council’s pension scheme, bearing in mind that our membership of it was on terms and conditions that were less generous than those which applied to staff.

In short, an ordinary backbench councillor is expected to work for free for at least a third but maybe as much as half of their time, whilst accruing no pension entitlement. Or, to put it another way, Councillors are engaged by the electorate on terms and conditions that, if the Council they serve on sought to apply them to other staff, it would be breaking the law.

I am not trying to drum up sympathy, but I think it is fair to say that most reasonable people would concede that the remuneration of Councillors is not lavish. Those who are privileged enough to be elected on 22 May are likely to be rather more public spirited and less self interested than the prevailing view of politicians in general might suggest. Oink, Oink!