MR A. Withington (Letters, August 27) questions why, as an independent member of the council's standards committee, he has not been able to raise his concerns about members' allowances, given the change in the process.
Statutory regulations provide for the allowances to be considered and fixed by an independent remuneration panel. It is the panel which makes recommendations to the council.
Members of the independent remuneration panel cannot be members of the council, nor can they be members of a committee or a sub-committee. This includes any independent or co-opted members. The council carried out an appointment process which was open to public scrutiny.
It is correct that, up until this municipal year, there was provision for the standards committee (including independent members such as Mr Withington) to consider the proposals of the independent remuneration panel and pass any comments to the full council, as the ultimate decision-makers.
This process was changed to maintain the independence of the recommendations of the remuneration panel and to maintain its credibility.
Mr Withington's letter is therefore inaccurate in that the responsibility has not been taken away from the standards committee and given to another committee on which there are no independent members. It is still the case that completely independent people make recommendations to full council in an open and transparent way.
Mr Withington also talks about the index-linking of the allowances but neglects to set out that this was again considered by the independent remuneration panel, who also took account of mechanisms applied in other local authorities.
In order to apply a fair and equitable means of dealing with the allowances, the panel recommended that they should be increased annually at the same rate as the pay award agreed by the Joint Council for Local Government Services.
Finally, as Mr Withington has pointed out, copies of the members' allowance scheme are available, and certainly some members of the public have chosen to exercise their right to comment in the past.
COUNCILLOR
SHARON BRIGGS,
chairman,
standards committee.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article