Row over five per cent pay rise for councillors as increase accepted

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council’s Labour administration proposed the rise and voted to accept it, with senior councillors saying it was necessary, as ‘allowances should not be a barrier’ to allow people to represent their communities.

Currently, councillors are paid a yearly allowance of £11,471.

Rotherham Councillors receive a lower basic allowance than in Sheffield (£15,000) Doncaster (£13,447), and Barnsley (£11,823).

Conservative councillor Joshua Bacon called the increase a ‘disgrace’, adding that the Labour administration had increased council tax ‘at any opportunity’,

Councillor Simon Ball, leader of the Conservative Group, said: “At a time when council leaders, especially socialist ones, are standing up saying we must increase the council tax, and increase the burden on the people of Rotherham, we then cannot be putting our own allowances up, and it will be interesting to see what happens next year in the budget.

“This is not acceptable, I don’t think, to the taxpayers of Rotherham, and I will not be supporting this rise in allowance.

Independent councillor Michael Bennett Sylvester said pay should be frozen this year, adding that on average, councillors miss one in five meetings.

“While we have many hard-working councillors, we have to recognise the average councillor is missing one in five meetings, and in fact councillor Ball, with your members it’s more than one in four,” he told the meeting.

Councillor Greg Reynolds added that the timing of the vote before Christmas was ‘inappropriate’, and ‘shows insensitivity’.

Leader of the council, Chris Read, told the meeting that he had the ‘lowest remuneration’ of any council leader in Yorkshire with health and social care responsibilities, and that councillor allowances today cost the taxpayer £200,000 less than in 2014.

Responding to the Conservatives’ remarks, coun Read said: “The Liz Truss fan club over there that gifted the people of Britain with a huge real terms pay cut are now the people complaining that local government services have had to be cut.

Coun Read added that the Conservative government had ‘forced £200 million worth of austerity onto this council’.

He said: “If this isn’t money that they believe members should get, you don’t need to take it. When the budget comes, that will help a little bit with services that we need to provide the rest of our residents.

“It won’t even begin to undo the damage to our services that you lot have done to the services that people in our borough need.

“None of us are here for the money, but equally it cannot be the case that only people with private incomes can afford to represent their communities.”

Now that the increase has been agreed, councillors will receive an annual allowance of £12,045.

Additional money will be paid for those with special responsibilities, including the council's leader who will receive £27,144 a year.

The payments will be backdated to the beginning of April and will total £955,698 for 2023-24.