Scotland's taxpayers are footing a £25m bill for councillors. That's the combined amount claimed in salaries and expenses by the 1222 elected members across the country's 32 local authority areas. It's a 40% rise on the cost eight years ago and this figure doesn't include the benefits councillors accrue from their publicly subsidised pensions.
The revelations come just months after a hard-hitting report by Scotland's public spending watchdog criticised local authorities for failing to drive down costs and provide value for money.
Under local government allowances rules, which were radically overhauled in May 2007, councillors receive a basic salary of between £15,838 and £47,516, depending on seniority and council size. They are also entitled to claim for subsistence, phone calls and travel expenses, including a 40p per mile rate for using their own car on council business.
It must be said that several councillors across Scotland submitted no claim for expenses.
Without doing into detail I used to know of one councillor who certainly didn't earn their pay. They were in a full-time public service job but had time off from their publicly funded work for which they received the appropriate payment. The constant whine about the extraordinary 80 hour week they said they worked bored me silly because it was obvious, if they were working these hours between two responsible jobs, then neither job was receiving quality attention over the long term. That is the main reason I think nowadays councillors should be full-time and not in any other employment. You may prove me wrong if you wish. I should like to think that most councillors are full-time and ought to declare to their electorate if that isn't the case.
May I also say I know some excellent councillors who do great work and are completely dedicated to their communities but they know that stating they work 80 hours a week would not impress anyone, at least only a few.
These days in Scotland the job of councillor has become important. In an independent Scotland they will be vital. We need the best and councillors ought to have to go through the hoops MSPs do. I say that because I know my own councillor but I've never had any contact with her and she's never made any attempt to make contact with me. Not even a cheap flyer. Easy money?
May I also say I know some excellent councillors who do great work and are completely dedicated to their communities.
The source of this article was in the Sunday Post of 14 June but the link no longer appears to work. It seems DC Thomson does not have an online archive.
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I've known a few useless councillors but on the whole I think councillors work much harder and under greater pressure than MPs or MEPs. The councillor has no hiding place. He lives among the community he has to serve and they will seek him out even if he makes no move to contact them. I've known a number of councillors who took the job seriously, and mightily regretted ever getting involved because of the way it utterly took over their lives.
Of course they should be full time, and the pay should reflect that. Pay should also reflect the standard requirement for working unsocial hours, being permananently on call, and so on.
I entirely agree with you that anyone who says they work 80 hours a week is either talking hooey or producing 80 hours of very bad work a week. A general manager of a large manufacturing company once told me that he never left his office before 10 pm. I really pissed him off when I said that I hoped he wasn't doing anything important, as a normal person's judgement begins to become impaired after about 3:30 pm. Anyone with software development experience can confirm that a problem that seems intractable at 5 pm has an obvious solution at 8 am next morning.
STV should help the quality of councillors. The old FPTP system led to high demands being placed on Labour to fill many council seats, impossible to do and maintain quality in their candidates even had they been minded to do that.
It could be time to reduce the number of councils, although if there are too few, local accountability is weakened and we risk creating another political class - a bunch of self-seeking scoundrels like the Westminster mob. Still, I think there is room for adjustment - or should that be left until after independence?
Morning Vronsky. I've known some super councillors and I agree most do a great job, but the work also attracts a few who think it's a gravy train now there's a salary. In the old days the job attracted some who had a need to be prominent in their communities - not much difference I don't suppose.
There's definitely room for adjustment because of all the duplication, but like you say, I wouldn't want accountability reduced and if we had larger councils that's what would happen.
It's only 13 years since the last rehash so yes, we should wait until independence now. It won't be long!
Some councillors in Glasgow have up to eight surgeries a month (guess which party they work for) and do a phenomenal amount of work for their constituents and the city. But this is related entirely to dedication and perhaps a freedom of personal circumstances. Until councillors are paid even an average wage for a fulltime job, many ably qualified candidates will be put off pursuing this as a 'career'. Of course, the flip side is the fear that an occasional 'character' may accept the money and fade away into the background amongst a larger council grouping. But a standards committe (and good journalism) should cover that nowadays...
What would you class as a career wage Mek?
Throughout my lifetime I always thought public service was just that, but now financial reward seems more important.
I know many councillors work hard, mainly from the party I support, but some are never seen or heard of again.
Fifteen grand is not exactly a gravy train Subrosa and that is what the overwhelming majority of councillors are on.
There are political advantages to having councillors on a low wage. John Mason for example benefitted from the fact that people in Glasgow East knew he lived (and still lives) in a council house in Barlanark, not a posh mansion in the southside. The same will also be true of Grant Thoms if he is the candidate in North East.
These guys are the exact opposite of gravy trainers. Both could and did earn far more in the private sector than they do (or did in John's case) as councillors and both made considerable personal sacrifices in order to be councillors.
That is true of practically every councillor I know. On one level it is admirable. We can know for a fact that they do that job out of commitment and not for the money, because the money is crap.
But on the other hand it means anyone with a family to support can't be a councillor unless they have a partner who earns a pretty good wage and can take on most of the financial commitments like mortgage payments, car payments etc. So although I believe we have a very high standard of councillor they are not very representative of the population they serve. You tend to get a mix of young people without kids or retired folk who can afford to do the job on that payscale. Other people simply cannot afford to do it even combined with part time work - and combined with full-time work you do end up with the scenario of people working 80 hr weeks which is just silly.
Indy I agree £15,000 isn't a gravy train but if you add on committee chairs etc some earn far more than that.
This post isn't to knock councillors, it's to show how much they cost and I leave it to each reader to decide if their councillor is worth their pay.
Being a councillor has always attracted the people you speak about and that's because these people have the most important aspect of the job - time.
In the past few private businesses could afford to allow people time off for council work although those who worked in the public sector usually were allocated a certain number of hours.
Indy politics isn't the only field of service where people make considerable personal sacrifices. Many volunteers give endless hours to helping the less fortunate for no financial reward and without volunteers Scotland would grind to a halt.
Also some of our military would earn far far more in civvie street than they do in the military, but they chose their vocation.
I don't see your point about mentioning John lives in a council house. Does that make him any better or worse than someone who owns their home, be it big, small or a mobile one? I would hate to think the house I live in affected the voluntary work I do in any way. It certainly should not.
Let me repeat, I know many councillors who do a great job.
Sure, I appreciate that politics is not the only field where people make sacroifices to do work they are committed to.
It is however the only field where that is not acknowledged.
Re the point about John Mason (and Grant Thoms) living in council houses - the point there is that so do most of their constituents. They both represent poor areas which they actually live in, unlike the pathetic David Marshall, Margaret 'I've lived in the east end all my life' Curran or Michael 'Who?' Martin.
One of the things which I think is driving public disenchantment with politics is the sense that politicians are distanced from the reality of daily life as their constituents experience it. So I do think it is important that councillors are a part of the community they represent. You would not want anyone going into it for the salary and going home to their nice house in the suburbs at the end of each day. But equally we have to recognise that the salary on offer excludes people with financial commitments such as children from doing the job. There is no easy solution to that.
I disagree that good councillors and their work is not acknowledged. In fact it's far more acknowledged than most volunteer work which nobody really knows or cares about - until they need their services of course.
Yes I see your point Indy about councillors from poor areas, but, does that mean if John Mason bought a flat/house for himself then the community would shun him? Hope not.
Let's not forget Indy, that most of my lifetime councillors were not paid anything except expenses. Did Scotland grind to a halt? No, but of course the brown envelopes were very prominent as we all know.
It shouldn't be the salary that attracts folk, it should be the fact they think they can improve peoples lives. It's not that long ago a salary became the norm, mainly because the labour party wanted it if I remember rightly.
Let's face it, people with children have to make choices, same as all of us. I doubt if any good parent would have the time to do council work (owing to evenings etc when children need parents).
Truthfully, I'm kind of getting weary of hearing the 'awful' life politicians have. It's strange that for every councillor, MSP and MP vacancy there are thousands desperate for the jobs.
Yes I am aware that in the past most councillors were not paid anything other than expenses and frankly that accounts for the quality of many of those councillors.
I do not wish to tar all councillors with the same brush obviously - I am talking mainly about Glasgow/Lanarkshire here, which in the past was practically all Labour and the reputation of those councillors for corruption was fully deserved. Changed days and I am sure no one would wish to go back to that model.
Quite honestly I cannot imagine why you think that there are thousands of people all desperate to be councillors. I assure you that there are not. The party will have difficulty in filling all the available candidacies, especially now that there are no longer any 'paper candidates'.
I do appreciate that you may be sick of hearing that politicians do not have an easy life but equally I am sure you appreciate that politicians are sick of the ever present assumption that they are involved in politics out of self-interest.
As for what would happen withoot councillors - no, Scotland would nit grind to a halt. What would happen is that local services would be determined entirely (rather than mainly) by paid officers and the public would have no way to call them to account other than through their parliamentarians or the ombudsman. As a consequence of that local authorities would have to beef up their customer relations departments to deal with a higher volume of complaints/enquiries (previously dealt with by councillors) so I suggest that no cash savings would be made but we would lose political accountability we currently have over the services we pay for.
Morning Indy. Jings I never thought a wee post about the cost of councillors would cause such a stooshie.
I've never heard of a problem getting people to stand as councillors, in fact here one party seems to rear them. :) Of course this is the east and, other than reading bellegrove and David's blogs, I don't know much about the west as I've never lived there.
Maybe one day I shall do a post asking for folks to define 'political accountability'. As present, I see that meaning little or nothing. I shall test it out though because I'm off to email my own councillor and ask why a sign warning of red squirrels has been tucked away in a private estate when their main playground is a field accessed from the main road. I shall keep you updated if you like.
Don't mean to cause a stooshie - but I can think of one example in Glasgow where we lost political accountability over what was formerly a local government service, housing. When Glasgow's stock of housing was transferred to the GHA everyone was told that it would be a vast improvement. In financial terms it has been, because the GHA is able to access money that Glasgow City Council was not able to access (thanks to Gordon Brown's rules). In every other way it has been a disaster. I won't go into details - you just need to google GHA to get an insight into some of the problems that have arisen. The core problem however is that the GHA is no longer directly accountable which has allowed the management to get away with things they would never have got away with when housing came under the council's umbrella. A salutary lesson.
I have to admit to following the GHA business reasonably closely Indy mainly because I was shocked that the setup even got off the ground.
You're right of course, it has been a disaster and a very expensive one at that.
Oh, have you visited Lallands Peat Worrier's blog this morning? He has a tribute to you. I won't say more because it will spoil the surprise. :)
Never one to leave a question hanging in the air... The average national wage in Scotland is GBP28,296 according to STV news and Scotsman articles in November of last year. That would do me for a fulltime job as a councillor (I'll pay for my own food and bus-pass on that)...
Mek, Indy says councillors receive £15,000, the article says nearly £16,000 - £47,000+. I'm quite out of date but I've heard some councillors around here earn around £25,000- £30,000.
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