Sadly, it would appear that Mayor Dacres' Administration has got off to the same less than surefooted start as that of her predecessor 6 years ago. I planned to go to this week's Council AGM so was waiting for the Council to publish the papers for the meeting online. This they duly did and I took a look. I was surprised to see, when I read the report on Members' Allowances, that the Council was proposing to make some very substantial increases to these. One of the big standout proposals, recommendation 3, was to increase the basic allowance by 32.85%, from £12,014 to £15,960, backdated to April last year. I put a link to the report on the Council's website on X, formally known as Twitter. A few days later when I wanted to share the link to the report to others I noticed that the original report had been changed. The proposal to raise the basic allowance had been 'revised'. Now recommendation 3 says that the basic allowance is to be raised by 3.88%, from £12,014 to £12,480, backdated to April last year. Happily, I had downloaded the report so I could check that I hadn't gone mad:
The new report still contains some substantial increases to exiting allowances and introduces some new ones, in particular for the newly created Executive-Scrutiny hybrid role of Cabinet Advisers. But in all other respects the new report appears to be the same as the original one. The Mayor must have been a change of heart after she had agreed the increase and signed off the report. Perhaps she will let us know why at the AGM on Wednesday if not before?
For ease of reference, here is a link to the Agenda for the AGM. The new Members' Allowances report is item 14, at the end.
