Sheffield City Council Elected Members Allowances ================================================= Author: J.G.Harston Version: 1.00 Date: 19/01/2002 http://mdfs.net/User/JGH/Docs/Council/Cllr/Pay/Review3 Introduction ------------ A members' allowance is compensation to the elected member for the service provided by them. Under the current system all elected members receive an identical basic allowance. Some elected members receive an additional allowance for specific posts. An identical basic allowance for all members reveals an assumption that all elected members should be compensated by the same amount for their service. This leads to the implicit assumption that all elected members provide the same level, quantity or quality of service for their compensation. Analysis -------- There are 12 major bodies of the City Council comprising a membership of 151 places: 4 Planning Boards 4x10 places = 40 6 Scrutiny Boards 3x14+3x15 places = 87 1 Licensing Board 1x12 places = 12 1 Childminder/Social Services Board 1x12 places = 12 TOTAL 151 places (There are also the Area Panels, but all members are automatically a member of their area panel by virtue of being an elected member, so they are not discussed here. In effect, membership of an Area Panel can be considered as a "base" workload.) These 151 places have to be filled by the available 76 elected members - 87 members minus the 10 cabinet members and the one Lord Mayor. This implies a placement of exactly two bodies for all but one elected member (76x2=152). However, as the following table shows, this is not the case. Elected Members Membership of Council Bodies, all Political Groups ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bodies Number 5 : 1 * 4 : 5 ***** 3 :19 ******************* 2 :18 ***************+++ 1 :26 ************************++ 0 : 2 ** TOTAL 76 Note: '+' indicates members who only serve on the Education and Social Services Scrutiny Board for Education matters only. Most elected members only serve on one body. Almost 90% of members serve on between one and three bodies, but that does not lead to the assumption that the majority of members serve on the average of two bodies. Over three quarters of members do not serve on the average of two bodies. It follows that the majority of members are either being overcompensated or undercompensated for the service they provide. There is an accepted principle in place that being a Chair of a major body warrants additional compensation. Does that principle not also imply that being a working member of four bodies warrants greater compensation that being a working member of only one body? If it is a competant use of the public purse to compensate different members identically for different provisions of service to the public, then this implies that the additional service provided by being a Chair of a council body should not receive additional compensation. Proposal -------- A scheme of compensation to elected members could be set up that pays a small basic portion with an additional component for the number of major council bodies that member is a working member of. As an example, an elected member who worked on only one major council body would receive base+1extra and an elected member who worked on four major bodies would receive base+4extra. In this manner members would be more closely compensated for the service they provide to the public purse. Flaws in this analysis ---------------------- This is purely a comparative analysis comparing workload of elected members based on their membership of the major council bodies. It does not attempt to take into account members' workload and contribution to the public good derived from activities outside these bodies. There is likely to be some correlation between the outside workload an elected member can take on and the in-council workload they can take on. If a member has the time and ability to work on four major council bodies, there is a probability that they have the time and ability to take on a higher amount of ward-based work than a colleague on only one major council body. This study has used the term "Major Bodies" to refer to those bodies of the City Council where the Chair receives a Special Responsibility Allowance. This comparison does not count members' membership of Area Panels. All elected members are automatically a member of the Area Panel of the area they are elected within. If this comparison included Area Panel membership this would just change the row labels of the tables from a range of 0 to 5 to a range of 1 to 6. There are a small number of members who sit on two Area Panels, and this would modify the precise shape of the distribution, but the overall trend would remain the same. Hardship -------- An elected members allowance scheme should not take account of elected members' hardship. An individual's hardship is a matter to be resolved through access to a social welfare insurance scheme of some sort. Two people should not be remunerated to different levels for identical work purely because one of them is perceived to be under greater hardship than another. Whether an individual has access to a properly functioning welfare scheme is entirely another matter.