Councillors Allowances

With MP's expenses constant fodder in the press, perhaps I shouldn't stoke the fire that I'm about to....

But surely openess is the name of the game, and therefore many will be interested to know that the full Council is expected to approve the recommendations of the renumeration panel on Councillor's allowances next Thursday.

It's worth noting that this is set by an independent panel of 5, none of whom are Councillors. The allowances are intended to reflect the amount of work that Councillors put in and are calculated with reference to the national average wage.

The headline figures are a basic allowance for all Councillors of £11,200.

SRA's on top of basic allowance (I believe one only payable per person). Some examples:
Mayor (Margaret Simon): £14,000
Council leader (Wesley Fitzgerald): £28,000
Committee chair (Several): £7,280
Main opposition leader (I believe Ainsley Arnold): £7,280

I am not eligible for any SRA's.

This is a few percent increase on last year which I think was about £10,500 or something similar. However - it's worth noting that last year we voted to only accept 1/2 of the payment on the basis that we were only a shadow council and councillors were recieving payments from other authorities. (Although some of us weren't).

A few people fought against this at the time because it would be attacked by the paper this year as us "doubling" our pay. They thought it would be better to award the full amount but for members to elect not to draw it. A technical difference which wouldn't allow for bad headlines.

The question is this: will the papers fall into the elephant trap we laid them?

I'm looking forward to the comments on this one....