The councillors who chair the meetings have the best paid positions.
At a recent meeting of Welwyn Hatfield Council they considered their wages or allowances as they are known.
All Councillors have to attend meetings, of which the decisions impact residents of the borough, on top of work undertaken on behalf of their residents. This is all covered under their basic allowance and a full breakdown of their role and the roles for special responsibilities can be viewed here.
While the basic rate paid to all Councillors is a reasonable £5,651.72 some of the special positions allow for a very lucrative addition.
There are a few positions that come with extra responsibilities like the Leader and Cabinet positions which can make stand-alone decisions under certain circumstances among other things and their allowance top up reflects this.
The really lucrative positions are the Chair positions of the meetings: these positions are a top up for being in charge at the meeting they would otherwise have attended anyway so how much extra work do they do for the money?
We looked at two of the Chair positions to calculate their per hour income. These are the Chair of Development Management Committee (DMC) which receives an extra £5,651.72 and the Chair of the Cabinet Housing Panel (CHP) which receives an extra £3,956.20. (The figures are 4% higher for 2022/23).
The Chair of DMC is in charge of nine scheduled meetings per year which, looking at the minutes from last year, average out to two hours thirty minutes each.
The Chair of CHP is in charge of five scheduled meetings per year and looking at the minutes for last year, these averaged just over an hour each and one of the five was cancelled.
Generally, Chairs of Committees in local authorities would have briefings on their upcoming meeting to prepare them for as many eventualities as possible.
For this test we’ve assumed a briefing half as long as the actual meeting.
Which added up gives an hourly wage for the Chair of DMC of £166
This is dwarfed by the Chair of CHP hourly wage of £659
During a cost of living crisis these Councillors will be ok paying their energy bills, while the rest of us struggle to heat and eat.
We’ve reached out for comments from the Group Leaders of the three local political parties, all three voted for the new allowances. The full vote is shown below.
