Issue - meetings

The Monitoring Officer presented a report on the Members’ Allowances Scheme 2022/23.

The report proposed the first set of changes to the Members’ Allowances Scheme in four years (i.e. since 2018). It was proposed that the Basic Allowance be increased to the level recommended by the London Councils Independent Remuneration Panel (LCIRP) in its recently published report for 2022 which, to all intents and purposes, represented an increase to the Basic Allowance equivalent to the local government staff pay awards since 2018.

With regard to Special Responsibility Allowances and particularly the roles of Leader, Deputy Leader, Cabinet Member and Chair of Overview and Scrutiny Committee, consideration was given to the levels recommended by the LCIRP in its 2022 report and officers also conducted a benchmarking exercise against other London Boroughs’ schemes to provide a comparison (based on allowance levels in 2021/22). Stemming from that, although it was not proposed to increase SRAs to the LCIRP recommended levels due to the ongoing pressures on the Council’s finances, the report did propose specific increases to some of those posts referred to above as well as an ‘inflationary’ increase to all SRAs, again equivalent to the local government staff pay awards since 2018.

As part of the evolution of the Council’s governance arrangements, it was also proposed to create the new role of Deputy Cabinet Member from 2022/23 and the deletion of the role of Member Champion.

The Assembly resolved to:

(i)   Agree that the annual Basic Allowance paid to all councillors be increased to £12,014 for the 2022/23 municipal year, in line with the recommendation of the London Councils Independent Remuneration Panel;

(ii)   Agree the increases to Members’ Special Responsibility Allowances for the 2022/23 municipal year, as detailed in the report;

(iii)   Agree the creation of up to three Deputy Cabinet Member posts from the 2022/23 municipal year and the deletion of the role of Member Champion; and

(iv)   Adopt the Members’ Allowances Scheme 2022/23 at Appendix A to the report, to be effective from 26 May 2022.