Senior North Yorkshire Councillors are backing a recommendation to increase annual allowances for councillors by just over 50 percent.
Currently county councillors can claim a basic allowance of £10,316 a year.
An independent panel is recommending that from April, councillors on the new North Yorkshire Council should be able to claim £15,500.
A full meeting of North Yorkshire County Council will next month will decide whether to accept the panels recommendation which has been backed this week by the County Council's Executive committee.
Barry Khan is the county councils Assistant Chief Exec, he says the figures reflect an increase in workload for councillors, as the county moves from having 319 councillors to just 90.
And he stresses the panel is independent.
The five-member panel concluded the workload of councillors would increase by about 25 per cent in serving the unitary authority compared to the county council. The panel, members of which have no connection to the council, said it had also taken inflation and allowances paid in comparable unitary authorities into account when making the recommendation.
The panel said it recognised the economic challenges being faced within the community and had been guided by and taken into consideration the average pay awards in the public sector of four to five per cent.
The panel’s report states:
“Councillors volunteer for their roles. They are not remunerated at a commercial rate for their time, as if they were employees. However, the allowances should not be set at a level which acts as a disincentive to conscientious performance of duties, or which does not reflect the considerable time commitment required for the role.
“It is important that the council feels able to attract high quality candidates to stand as councillors, from a wide variety of backgrounds.
“There should also be no financial barrier to anyone who wishes to stand for election.”
April will see the existing county, district and borough councils abolished and replaced with a new single North Yorkshire Council.
It will mean the county's existing 319 councillors will be replaced by just 90.
As the total cost of basic allowances paid over the last year to the county’s 319 county and district councillors is about £2m, the panel says it's recommendation represents a saving of £636,000.
The issue of allowances is often among the most contentious decisions councillors are faced with. Danby and Mulgrave Councillor - David Chance - thinks the increase is justified but has called for allowances to be set nationally in future.
The authority’s deputy leader, Councillor Gareth Dadd, told the meeting the panel had made its recommendation after taking evidence from elected members as well as from comparable local authorities across the country.
He said:
“I don’t think it is morally right for us to set an independent panel up and not accept its recommendations.”
Councillor Dadd said elected members would not have to take their full allowances.
He said while people may have a view on how much of an allowance councillors should be given, in approving the panel’s recommendation for consideration by the full council, executive members had to decide whether what was being proposed was “clearly absurd”.
The Thirsk councillor added the panel’s recommendation was “within the realms of reasonableness” and that it would be a dangerous move for the executive effectively to suggest their own pay rates.
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