Mid-Sussex Councillors Vote To Raise Their Allowances

Mid Sussex councillors have voted to approve an independent panel's advice to increase their basic allowance by £500 and the leader’s allowance by £2,000.

The decision was made during a meeting of the full council on Wednesday (July 26) and will see each councillor receive £5,700 per year while leader Robert Eggleston will receive £22,800.

A full table of allowances is at the foot of this article.

An Independent Remuneration Panel made the recommendation in December but it was decided at the time not to approve it until after the elections.

Other increases for committee chairs and the like were also approved.

While each councillor will receive an increase, the overall budget for allowances will be just over £21,100 lower than in previous years.

This is because there are now only 48 councillors instead of the previous 54.

In a report to the meeting, the Remuneration Panel said it ‘acknowledged the increase in the population notionally represented by each councillor’.

Not everyone was happy with the increase.

Paul Brown (Green, Lindfield Rural & High Weald) thought it should be higher.

He told the meeting:

"I estimated my spending last year as about 800 hours on Mid Sussex District Council business, which means that the allowance works out much less than the minimum wage."

Local authorities everywhere would point out that the allowances are, literally, that — an allowance not a wage — designed to compensate them for their time spent on council business.

Councillors are not ‘paid’ to carry out their duties.

Mr Brown added that he knew of younger people who were unwilling to stand for council because they would end up losing money due to having to leave work to attend meetings during the day.

The increase was approved by 31 votes to three with nine abstentions.