When Swindon councillors were discussing whether to take a 6.5 per cent increase in their allowances, a startling discrepancy emerged in what the borough’s members take home compared to their counterparts in Wiltshire.
As the council’s Conservative cabinet agreed unanimously to recommend to councillors that they did not take any increase in their allowance – one it its members, Dale Heenan pointed out that members Wiltshire Council are paid £15,000.
And the £15,004 annual allowance for a backbench member in County Hall in Trowbridge is 70 per cent more than a backbencher at Euclid Street would receive - £8,787.
Wiltshire councillors have not yet made a decision on whether to accept any proposed increase in next year’s allowance - but if they do, with Swindon’s members sticking with last year’s figures in recognition of the cost-of-living crisis, the gap could get even wider.
All councillors in the perspective authorities get the basic amount and there are multipliers of that for differing roles.
Swindon Borough Council’s leader David Renard gets an extra allowance of three times the basic on top of his normal allowance, bringing his total allowance to £35,148.
That’s a decent sum, but is dwarfed by his Wiltshire counterpart Richard Clewer’s total of £61,790, made up of his basic, a leader’s allowance of £37,510 and a party leader’s allowance of £9,276.
It should be noted that Wiltshire council’s geographic area is many times that of Swindon’s, its population of nearly 470,000 is almost exactly double that of Swindon’s 233,000 and Wiltshire’s annual revenue budget of £417m is more than twice Swindon’s at £156m.
A spokesman for Wiltshire Council said: “Councillors allowances are recommended by the Independent Remuneration Panel – made up of members of the public.
“Because the amount councillors get is linked to the pay award for staff, which is currently being negotiated we do not know what the amount will be at this stage for 2023/24.”
In Swindon that calculation is easy, as it will remain exactly the same.
The deputy leader of the council Gary Sumner receives an extra allowance of £16, 256 over the basic £8,000 allowance, and other cabinet members get an extra of £13,181.
The leader of the opposition Labour councillors Jim Robbins gets an extra of £6,590, which is the same as the chairman of the scrutiny, planning licensing and the overview and scrutiny committees.
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