Council facing quiz over allowances

A SADDLEWORTH parish councillor has stepped up his campaign for councillors to take a pay cut by calling on Oldham Council to come clean on how much it pays out.

After public outrage at how much MPs at Westminster are pocketing from dubious expense claims, Labour councillor Ken Hulme has tabled questions to the council’s cabinet to find out what the borough’s 60 councillors receive.

In April, Councillor Hulme said members claimed well in excess of £500,000 every year in allowances and expenses and, at a time of 500 job cuts to cover a £20 million budget black hole, the payments should be reviewed.

His questions for a cabinet meeting on May 27 are:

::How much in total did Oldham Borough councillors receive in payments, allowances and expenses in the past financial year, including expenses and allowances made to those councillors representing the borough on outside bodies?

::Will the council publish a full and complete record of all payments to individual councillors in the past financial year?

Councillor Hulme said: “In the past few weeks we have seen the money and greed culture in the Westminster and European Parliaments undermine what little respect the public still had for politicians.

“I believe the public service ethos that should motivate politicians has been severely undermined by the disgraceful, self-serving behaviour of so many of our elected representatives.

“Unfortunately, the money culture isn’t just confined to Westminster and Brussels.”

He said councillors used to receive only out-of-pocket expenses for travel and meals based on a dominant ethos of public service and civic duty — but now, in some cases, can receive tens of thousands of pounds.

He said there are many volunteers who freely give their time to benefit the community, and councillors, while being compensated for out-of-pocket expenses and loss of earnings, should be no different.

Councillor Hulme added: “Councillors are there to serve the people and the community, financial gain and the money culture should not be a part of local democracy.

“I believe that when folk see the many hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money paid each year to our local councillors, many will ask ‘Is my councillor really worth this?’.

“Others, like me, will say that in a period of austerity and cutbacks, with hundreds facing redundancy from the council and frontline services like libraries and youth clubs being cut, shouldn’t councillors make some sacrifices as well?

“A few hundred thousand pounds off the councillors allowances bill every year could do a lot of good in hard-pressed frontline services.”