To receive the report of the Corporate Director, Governance and Monitoring Officer proposing the adoption of the members’ allowance scheme for 2018/19.

(Note: To match the content of the report, the word ‘Statutory’ was removed from the Appendix)

The Council considered a report of the Corporate Director, Governance and Monitoring Officer (circulated in a supplementary agenda) regarding the Members’ Allowance Scheme.

Councillor Andrew Wood moved and Councillor Peter Golds seconded the following amendment to the motion as tabled:

“In the last months of the previous Council year twenty-three Councillors received a Special Responsibility Allowance SRA (19 Labour, 2 Conservative, 1 Aspire, 1 PATH) which on a full year basis would have cost £247,300 (not including employer National Insurance costs).

Significant savings were achieved last year due to a number of Councillors covering two different roles but who were only paid one SRA. Had every single role been taken up by a different Councillor then 30 Councillors would have been paid £304,600 in total.

Three of these Councillors and £27,300 of the costs were due to leaders of opposition groups also getting an SRA. This will fall to one opposition Councillor receiving £5,000.

With less opposition and more Labour Councillors to spread the workload we do not support the proposed changes by the Labour administration which would increase the annual cost to £375,300 (these costs exclude the Mayor and each Councillors basic Allowance of £10,938 per annum)

It would mean that potentially 28 Labour Councillors would get an SRA up from 19 before the election.

The Conservative Groups proposed amendment is as follows:

1.         Two Councillors (not three) getting a substantial increase in SRA so that they can more effectively support the Mayor by being able to work on an almost full-time basis.

2.         Some important Committee Chairs are paid less than Chairs of less important committees or Mayoral advisers. We believe SRA’s should more closely match responsibility, so we propose to increase the SRA for the Chairs of Pension, Audit, Licensing to £8,000

And reduce the SRA for the Speaker, Mayoral Advisers, Scrutiny Leads and Scrutiny Sub-Committee Chairs to £6,000 to better reflect workload.

3.         We do not believe we need a Chief Whip, Leader of the Majority Group nor Deputy Speaker and that these roles should be removed as well as one of the three Mayoral advisers

4.         That each Committee and Sub-Committee should be covered by a separate Councillor with no duplication of roles.

5.         This still provides money for 2 Mayoral Advisers and 2 Scrutiny leads to cover non-committee work (one of these can be the Deputy Speaker).

6.         That we save the money from having fewer opposition leaders.

The following is a summary of the different proposals. April 2018 Actual is the SRA’s paid in April grossed up for a full year. The April 2018 Maximum Payable would have been the total if every SRA role was filled by a separate Councillor instead of being unfilled or if Cllrs had not done two jobs but been paid once.

The Conservative proposal would save money compared to the April 2018 Maximum payable option by effectively banking most of the savings created by the removal of most of the opposition leaders.

SCHEDULE 1

Special Responsibility Allowance

The following are specified as the special responsibilities for which special responsibility allowances are payable and the amounts of those allowances:

The amendment was put to the vote and was defeated

The recommendations were put to the vote and was agreed. Accordingly it was:

RESOLVED:

1.         That it be agreed that the updated Special Responsibility Allowances set out in Schedule 1 to the report be added to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Scheme of Members’ Allowances 2018/19 with any changes coming into effect from Thursday, 24^th May 2018 or the appointment of a Councillor to the Relevant position, whichever is the later.