Arun councillors set to agree allowances budget freeze

The recommendation for the overall figure to stay at last year's 448,650 will be debated by all councillors on September 2 after it was decisively backed by Arun's governance committee.

The total amount contains a mixture of increases and decreases to individual allowances put forward by an independent panel.

Future years, however, will see rises index-linked to pay awards to council staff by the government.

Gillian Brown, the leader of the Conservative-run council, led the calls for the overall burden on council taxpayers to stay unchanged for 2009/10.

She said: "The most important thing we have to do is to freeze the budget. This is an excellent report. I liked the logical way the panel presented it so we can see how things work out."

But Lib Dem David Biss and Independent Jim Brooks went further. They argued against any rises in allowances to enable the overall budget to be reduced.

Cllr Brooks said: "There should not be any increases because of the current financial circumstances."

The proposed allowances budget includes a four per cent rise for all councillors to 4,870 a year as well as the special responsibility payments to the chairman and vice chairman and cabinet members among others.

But the committee decided to overrule the panel's suggestion to backdate any increases to April 1 while limiting decreases to September 1. Both sets of new payments will start from the later date if they are finally agreed.

Members of licensing and development control committees will see their special allowances cut because of reduced workloads.

The leaders of the opposition groups will also suffer. Just one reduced payment is set to be made in future to the leader of the largest of the group instead of payments to all the groups.

Independent panel member Sandy Pascoe said she and her fellow members had created a hierarchy of allowances based on the amount paid to the leader and diminishing according to the roles of councillors.

She said a four per cent rise in the basic allowance to backbench councillors was justified because it had been two years since the amount had been reviewed.

Roger Elkins said: "In these financial times, to freeze the overall budget at last year's level is exactly the right approach."

Council head of democratic services Liz Futcher said councillors could decline to claim allowances. This already happened with the payments for IT and subsistence.

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