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17
Mar
Have any North Yorkshire councillors refused pay rise?
North Yorkshire councillors will see their pay increase by 2% next month.
The Stray Ferret revealed in November councillors had voted to award themselves a £340 uplift in their basic allowance from £17,000 to £17,340.
The increase will take effect at the start of the 2025/26 financial year, in which council tax will rise by the maximum 4.99% and the Tory-run local authority will make ‘efficiencies and savings’ worth £34 million.
We submitted a freedom of information request to the council asking how many of the 90 councillors had accepted the increase in full, and which ones — if any — had either declined it or donated some or all of it to charity.
The response, received on Thursday (March 13) said:
We have not been informed of any councillors who do not wish to accept this 2% increase.
Cllr Lindsay Burr and Cllr Liz Colling make charitable donations from their allowance payments through Give As You Earn. Please note, if councillors make charitable donations from their allowances after their allowances have been paid, then the council will not hold record of this.
Cllr Burr is a member of the North Yorkshire Independents group who represents Malton. Cllr Colling is the Labour member for Falsgrave and Stepney, in Scarborough.
The council is controlled by 47 members of the Conservatives and Independent group. There are also 14 Liberal Democrat, 10 Labour, 10 North Yorkshire Independents group, five unaffiliated and four Green councillors.
They are not formally paid as employees but receive a basic allowance to reflect the time they give.
A five-person independent remuneration panel recommended the pay increase that councillors ratified for themselves.
The panel said the increased workload and wider brief of councillors since district councils were abolished in 2023 justified the increase, adding: “The basic allowance should not be a financial disincentive to those who might otherwise wish to serve as an elected member.”
But a comparator document published by the council revealed North Yorkshire councillors were the fourth highest paid of 18 local authorities. The average basic allowance of the 18 local authorities was £14,406.
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