Review of councillors' expenses ... at a cost

The expert s input is expected to be seven to eight days and there will also be two other consultants on the panel whose pay rates will be 500 per day for two or three days.

It will add up to an estimated 9,000 bill for the council.

The spending was approved by the cabinet on Monday when council leader Jeremy Birch said it would mean the job would be done quickly and efficiently.

Cllr Jay Kramer said they are required to maintain an independent panel.

But Lib Dem leader Stephanie Edmonds said she was very concerned about the money being put forward for it.

And Labour s Cllr Richard Stevens, who is not a member of the cabinet but is former council leader, told the Hastings Observer: I am all in favour for councils to stop from becoming a rich and retired persons self-interest club, but I do not see, however, that in a poor- wage town it is justified to offer wages of 750 a day.

We had a panel comprised of voluntary members - one of which was the former editor of the Observer. The panel may not have been perfect but they came up with a scheme.

He said that at a time of budgetry constraint he was not sure whether the spending was really justified.

A report to the cabinet said the last time councillors allowances were reviewed it was carried out by a panel which was appointed to coincide with the introduction of the pilot modernised political arrangements in the autumn of 1999.

The council could have continued with that scheme, but if it wanted to amend it, it has to take the advice of a panel constituted under new local government law.

The new law means councils must have regard to the recommendations of the independent remuneration panel.

The council has approached Dr Declan Hall, an academic at the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham, who has extensive experience in producing schemes of allowances for councils, and he has said he will be willing to serve on the panel.

It s proposed that he will chair it.

When the council advertised for panel members in its About magazine it elicited only one response from a resident.

The previous panel was unpaid.