Councillors to discuss plans to give Executive Board members £800 pay rise

Senior councillors in Wrexham could be in line for an £800 pay rise – with Wrexham.com historically told there is no way for the council as a whole to avoid the award.

Councillor pay is set by the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales (you can see who makes up the panel, appointed by Welsh Government, here) and most years see a report come to Wrexham Council telling them they have to have a pay rise.

Next week members of the council’s democratic services committee will debate the pay increase proposals outlined the IRPW’s draft annual report.

The recommendations in the panel’s report would see eight members of the executive board senior salary receive over £30,000 a year in a 2.7% increase – taking the overall councillor pay bill almost to the £1,000,000 a year in Wrexham alone.

A similar £800 pay rise is also proposed for the leader and deputy leader of Wrexham Council, which locally would bring the salaries up to £49,100 and £34,600.

Senior salaries and the councillors who would receive the proposed increase are detailed below: 

Councillor Mark Pritchard (Council Leader) £48,300 -> £49,100
Councillor Hugh Jones (Deputy Leader) £33,800 -> £34,600
Councillor Andrew Atkinson £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor William Baldwin £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor David A Bithell £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor Terry Evans £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor D J Griffiths £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor David Kelly £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor Joan Lowe £29,300 -> £30,100
Councillor Phil Wynn £29,300 -> £30,100

Committee Chairs – who oversee the council’s scrutiny committees – will see pay go from £22,300 to £22,568, with the Leader of the Opposition, Cllr Dana Davies going from £22,300 to £22,568.

The Mayor also sees an increase from £21,800 to £22,568 and the Deputy Mayor £16,300 to £17,568

Every other ‘normal’ councillor will be seeing a pay rise with their basic salary going up by £268 from £13,600 to £13,868 a +1.97% increase.

Overall the additional costs to Wrexham Council will total £20,756 – meaning an extra £62,268 over the remainder of this council.

In recent weeks the Council have gone to unusual lengths to explain how strapped for cash they are likely to be due to the recent Welsh Government draft budget settlement, and are also in the middle of a consultation to ask you the public on what they should cut to save money.

As of yet there is no indication where the £20k funding will be found to pay for the pay rises year on year, but have previously flagged councillor pay being a common gripe when the public are asked about cuts. At the time we asked if lowering the number of Executive Board members was an option, and was told ‘everything is on the table‘.

The pay report creates an odd situation where pay reports are taken before councillors themselves to be ‘noted’ with raised hands, yet they themselves cannot reject the pay award.

We have been told Councillors basically can’t not note this report, so if all Cllrs were subject to an unlikely skiing accident in the next few minutes which temporarily restricted arm movements… they would still have to raise their hands to note the report? 🧐

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) March 28, 2018

In its latest report the panel states: “The IRPW note in their report that when setting the basic salary in 2009 it was aligned to the medium gross earnings of all full time employees living in Wales and was payable at three-fifths of that rate.

“If the alignment had continued the basic salary would now be closer to £16,000 per annum but increases have not kept pace due to the pressures on public expenditure. The increase proposed equates to 1.97% and would take effect from April 2019.

“The IRPW considers that the increase will help to limit further erosion of relative levels of remuneration in the basic salary paid to Elected Members.

“Although public sector funding continues to be constrained, the IRPW consider that a further increase in the basic salary is justified and based on the IRPW’s principle that its determinations should be affordable and acceptable. ”

The report to councillors next week explains this rise as: “The IRPW has not increased the senior salaries paid to these post holders for six years. They have only received any increase applicable to the basic salary of all members. The increase is proposed to recognise the differential in responsibility and workload between a chair of committee and a member of an executive.”

Councillors on the Democratic Services committee will be considering the formal report on November 1st, and in previous such meetings it has been made clear councillors did not want to be given a pay rise and that the IRPW were not listening to local councillors.

Councillors can individually write to the Head of Finance to forgo any pay rises, however the report does not contain any information on how many, if any, have done that previously.

You can view the report due for discussion for the Democratic Services Committee next month, here.