Written by Peter Bingle, Chairman, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs
There was once a time when local councillors no matter how senior used to receive an allowance for attending a committee meeting and nothing else. For six years between 1983 and 1989 I used to spend roughly forty hours a week at Wandsworth Town Hall on council business for which I received the princely sum of £1000 per year. We used to call it ‘curry money’ because most of it was spent in Ahmed’s or his brother Islam’s restaurants …
The beauty of this system was that you never became dependent on your council allowances to live. It was simply a small addition to your annual income.
The situation nowadays is very different. Councillors receive an allowance for simply being a councillor and then additional allowances for chairing committees and taking on extra responsibility. The result is that many councillors now rely on their council allowances to live. It is no longer a small addition to your annual income. It is often the major source of income for the individual concerned.
Why is this such a problem? When a councillor is promoted and appointed to be a member of the cabinet they get used to the additional income. Unsurprisingly they don’t ever want to give it up. The result is that there is too little change at the senior levels of councils. The old guard stay there forever and council leaders are loathe to sack people who they know will struggle financially as a result. This cannot be good for local democracy.
So what is to be done? Personally I would return to the old system but I accept that this cannot happen. The only solution is therefore to agree a system of redundancy for cabinet members and committee chairmen so when they are fired they have a period of three months to find new sources of income. It will cost a small amount of additional money but the benefits to local government would be enormous. Old guards across the country can be booted out and removed by council leaders who are no longer wracked by guilt over the personal financial consequences of doing so.
There is no greater champion than me of local government. At its best local government can transform a community. At its worst, however, it can get in the way and frustrate regeneration. I believe that Eric Pickles has forced councils of all political persuasions to look again at what they are doing and how they are doing. By forcing them to make significant savings for the first time in a generation the Communities Secretary has done them all a huge favour. What was certain before is certain no more. Every service should be looked at afresh. If there is no need for the council to provide it why should they continue to do so?
These are revolutionary times. For the first time since I retired from public life in 1990 (at the tender age of thirty) part of me regrets that I am now just an interested observer rather than a participant in local politics. The reality, of course, is that when you leave somewhere you must never go back. It is time for a new generation to take control and change the world.
This returns me to my opening theme about councillor allowances. At this most interesting time in local government youth must be given its fling. It won’t happen whilst the current system of allowances remains. Eric Pickles needs to be brave and change the allowances system.
Should councillors be paid? Are full-time councillors a good or a bad thing? Should youth be given its fling in local Town Halls?
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