‘Nice little earner’

OLDHAM councillors cost the borough’s taxpayers a mammoth £856,000 in allowances and expenses last year.

The shock revelation came in answer to a question by Councillor Ken Hulme at a Cabinet meeting.

Full details of individual payments made to the 60 councillors will be published on June 15.

The Delph and Denshaw parish councillor was told that £852,710 was paid out in allowances, as well as £3,342 in additional expenses over the last financial year.

The figure is up £110,000 on the previous year’s claims by councillors, which totted up to £746,323.

An indignant Councillor Hulme said: “For a cash-strapped authority making hundreds of people redundant and cutting frontline services like libraries and youth clubs this is a great deal of money to be paying out to its councillors.

“Clearly, some councillors are receiving considerably more in allowances and expenses than working people in the borough take home in their pay packets.

“Thousands more local people are struggling with the effects of the recession, trying to make ends meet on unemployment benefit.

“At one time, being a councillor was all about public duty and civic responsibility — money didn’t come into it.

“Now it seems for some it can be a nice little earner.

“Not only do all councillors get a basic allowance of between £8,000 and £9,000 a year, they seem to get it no matter how little or how much they actually do, with no questions asked.

“Councillors also get extra responsibility allowances of thousands of pounds for doing things that used to be considered part and parcel of a councillor’s job, such as chairing committees, representing the borough on outside bodies or being a Cabinet member.”

He posed the questions: “Are our councillors value for money, what do back-bench councillors actually do, how much casework do they get through, and do we really need so many councillors?”

Nationally, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has made a call for an overhaul in the system which pays out allowances and expenses to councillors.

Party chairman Paul Nuttall said many were turning into “career politicians” with the man in the street subsidising their lifestyle. He claimed council tax payments could be slashed if allowances and expenses were “properly scrutinised.”

He added: “There are junkets abroad, ostensibly for business, but the total costs of living-it-up comes out of the public purse.

“The favoured ones involved in the undemocratic ‘Cabinet’ system — something the voter was never consulted about — get extra payments for their role.

“No wonder they want such positions.”