Does your city, town or parish pay its councillors an allowance?
The Wiltshire Independent Remuneration Panel is undertaking a review of city, town and parish allowances within the Wiltshire unitary authority area to develop a standardised scheme which could be adopted by city, towns and parishes, if they wish to do so.
City, town and parish councils can choose to pay their members an allowance, known as a ‘parish basic allowance’, to recognise the time and effort councillors put into their duties. They may also make an allowance available to its Chairman.
There is no obligation on councils to pay any allowances or for councillors to accept an allowance. However, if a council wishes to pay a basic allowance in future, it should have regard to the recommendations of the Panel.
The Panel has therefore circulated a survey to all city, towns, and parish clerks (with a closing date of 28 October 2024) in order to understand the current position regarding allowances and to capture comments and suggestions. The Clerk or Responsible Financial Officer (RFO) can invite the members of the authority to complete a separate response to the survey and responses from individual elected members are also welcome.
Click here to access the survey. A Word version is also available for Councils who wish to discuss their submission as a group and can be downloaded here V4-IRP-Survey-(For-reference-only).
The Panel may follow up certain responses but only from respondents who have agreed to be contacted. If respondents wish to be interviewed/meet the panel, then the Panel will make every effort to meet such requests.
The Panel will make its recommendations in its final report which will be available in December 2024. Any questions regarding the review should be addressed to Simon Bennett, Senior Scrutiny Officer, Wiltshire Council.
