Tag Archives: allowances

Snouts in the trough – 2015 edition

27 Jul

Newham has published its annual report on the allowances paid to councillors in the previous financial year – April 2014 to March 2015.

The report lists all councillors who served in the financial year 2014-15 and as this was an election year it includes those who left office in May 2014, as well as those who were re-elected and those joining council for the first time.

It’s further complicated by Alec Kellaway dying shortly after the election and his being replaced by Tonii Wilson in a by-election a few months later. And by Charlene McLean being removed from office for non-attendance in March. She re-elected in May 2015.

Altogether 81 different people served as elected members in the period covered. Between them they claimed a total of £1,234,457 in allowances. Of that, £638,712 was paid as basic allowances, £592,869 as ‘special responsibility allowances’ (including the whole of the mayor’s £81,029 allowance) and £2,876 in other allowances (travel, childcare, phone etc.).

Though you wouldn’t know any of this by reading the report. It doesn’t provide totals for individual members or overall.

As ever – and quite deliberately – it has used a format that makes it unnecessarily awkward for anyone to work with. Would it really kill them to give us an Excel or .csv file?

So who gets the most? Well obviously that’s the Dear Leader. But look at the top ten earners among councillors:

Name Basic £ SRA £ Other £ Total £
R WALES 0 81,029 0 81,029
L HUDSON 10,734 36,977 0 47,711
R CRAWFORD 10,734 34,012 240 44,986
I CORBETT 10,734 34,012 0 44,746
F HUSSAIN 10,734 32,977 184 43,895
C FURNESS 10,734 32,977 100 43,811
E ROBINSON 10,734 32,977 100 43,811
A BAIKIE 10,734 32,977 0 43,711
U DESAI 10,734 32,977 0 43,711
K CLARK 9,118 27,458 180 36,756
A McALMONT 10,734 24,542 750 36,026

All but one are men. The only exception is Ellie Robinson. Yet again.

Aside from Anthony McAlmont, who is the ‘independent’ chair of Overview and Scrutiny, all those listed above are full-time councillors with ‘special responsibilities’ that require them to work 5 days a week on council business. Including Sir Robin that’s 10 full-time politicians we’re paying for. If the mayor is serious about finding £50 million in cuts I can think of one easy ways to make savings!

Don’t feel too sorry for Ken Clark: his earnings are suppressed by the fact he was only elected in May 2014 and therefore has seven weeks’ less pay to report than his peers.

For those of a nostalgic bent, here are the previous editions of ‘snout in the trough’:

  • 2011 edition – “Newham Councillors Paid More Than £1.2 million in Allowances”
  • 2012 edition – “Snouts in the trough – again”
  • 2013 edition – “Snouts in the trough – 2013 edition”
  • 2014 edition – “Money (that’s what I want)”

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Money (that’s what I want)

13 Jun

 

The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees

Details of the allowances paid to the mayor and councillors in the last financial year (2013/14) have been published in the ‘Summer Edition’ of the Newham Mag.

The Mag’s version of the table lists councillors in alphabetic order (except the mayor, obviously, who is always on top) and doesn’t include any totals. So it’s hard to see exactly how much is being paid and to whom.

I’ve taken the data, added up totals for each councillor and sorted them into rank order:

Name Basic* SRA Total
RA WALES 0 81,029 81,029
AR BAIKIE 10,734 31,042 41,776
IK CORBETT 10,734 31,042 41,776
RJ CRAWFORD 10,734 31,042 41,776
U DESAI 10,734 31,042 41,776
CW FURNESS 10,734 31,042 41,776
LT HUDSON 10,734 31,042 41,776
C MCAULEY 10,734 31,042 41,776
A KELLAWAY 10,734 26,901 37,635
EH SPARROWHAWK 10,734 22,765 33,499
E ROBINSON 10,734 22,720 33,454
Q PEPPIATT 10,734 18,624 29,358
F HUSSAIN 10,734 18,039 28,773
RA MIRZA 10,734 17,877 28,611
RN MANLEY 10,734 14,488 25,222
AB MCALMONT 10,734 14,488 25,222
T PAUL 10,734 14,488 25,222
WT VAUGHAN 10,734 14,488 25,222
NJ WILSON 10,734 14,488 25,222
A SINGH 10,734 10,347 21,081
K SCORESBY 10,734 9,362 20,096
J ALEXANDER 10,734 5,176 15,910
F BOURNE 10,734 5,176 15,910
S BRAYSHAW 10,734 5,176 15,910
A CHOWDHURY 10,734 5,176 15,910
D CHRISTIE 10,734 5,176 15,910
R RAHMAN 10,734 5,176 15,910
L SHAH 10,734 5,176 15,910
J GRAY 10,734 3,621 14,355
PW SCHAFER 10,734 3,449 14,183
S AHMAD 10,734 0 10,734
PM BRICKELL 10,734 0 10,734
L CAMERON 10,734 0 10,734
NK CHADHA 10,734 0 10,734
AA CHAUDHARY 10,734 0 10,734
B COLLIER 10,734 0 10,734
MS COLLIER 10,734 0 10,734
JH CORBETT 10,734 0 10,734
C FIBERESIMA 10,734 0 10,734
O GANGADHARAN 10,734 0 10,734
A GRIFFITHS 10,734 0 10,734
PM HOLLAND 10,734 0 10,734
KJ JENKINS 10,734 0 10,734
KR KAZI 10,734 0 10,734
JH LAGUDA 10,734 0 10,734
S MAHMOOD 10,734 0 10,734
C MCLEAN 10,734 0 10,734
P MURPHY 10,734 0 10,734
F NAZEER 10,734 0 10,734
FA NEKIWALA 10,734 0 10,734
M NICHOLAS 10,734 0 10,734
M PATEL 10,734 0 10,734
S PATEL 10,734 0 10,734
G PEARSON 10,734 0 10,734
P SATHIANESAN 10,734 0 10,734
PJ SHILLINGFORD 10,734 0 10,734
MM SKYERS 10,734 0 10,734
R TALATI 10,734 0 10,734
A TAYLOR 10,734 0 10,734
S THOMAS 10,734 0 10,734
H VIRDEE 10,734 0 10,734
Totals: 644,040 560,700 1,204,740

*net of £95 deducted at source for home use of a council-supplied computer and data registration fee

A few things worth noting:

  • 29 out of 60 councillors received some kind of ‘special responsibility allowance’ on top of their basic
  • The top 10 recipients of council cash, including the mayor, were all men
  • Only one woman, Forest Gate’s Ellie Robinson, is in the top 20 earners from councillor allowances
  • Of the 29 councillors with ‘special responsibilities’, just 6 were women
  • Including the mayor, 14 elected members got more in allowances than the average Newham household income
  • Prior to the change to the mayoral system in 2002 councillors received a basic allowance of just £533 a year

There has as yet been no public announcement about the allowances to be paid to the cabinet members and mayoral advisors Sir Robin has appointed following his re-election, but you can bet that they won’t be stinting themselves.

Public service can be so rewarding.

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Snouts in the trough – again

15 Aug

After a bit of prompting Newham has published details of the allowances and expenses paid to councillors during the financial year 2011/12.

The basic allowance paid to all councillors (except the mayor) is £10,829 per annum, less a £60 fee for using their council laptop for personal use and a £35 data protection registration fee. Around half of the council also receive additional ‘special responsibility’ allowances. 

In total our 61 councillors raked in £1,210,323 in allowances last year. That’s an average of £19,841 each.

The table below shows the top dozen earners on the council.

RA WALES (Mayor)  81,029
AR BAIKIE  46,389
IK CORBETT  42,811
RJ CRAWFORD  42,811
LT HUDSON  42,111
U DESAI  41,776
C MCAULEY  41,776
A KELLAWAY  37,635
CW FURNESS  37,291
JH LAGUDA  33,499
EH SPARROWHAWK  33,499
Q PEPPIATT  29,358

 

It is worth bearing a couple of things in mind while looking at this list:

Firstly, ordinary Newham people earn the second lowest wages in London at just £29,518 a year. A dozen councillors earn that or more just from their allowances, never mind any additional income they enjoy from their regular jobs.

Secondly, as recently as 2002 the basic allowance for councillors in Newham was just £533 a year. As council leader Robin Wales received an additional special responsibility allowance of £16,631. That scheme was replaced as soon as Sir Robin became mayor, when allowances rocketed to over £9,000 for councillors and £65,000 for the elected mayor.

Things have only got worse (or better, if you are lucky enough to be among the favoured few) since then.

A copy of the full report, listing all councillors, can be downloaded from the Newham website.

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