Interesting article in last weekend's Sunday Herald about councillors on Glasgow City Council receiving top-up payments for appointments to arms-length bodies set up by the local authority to provide services previously provided in-house, for example managing the council's fruit and flower market and maintaining car parks.
This, together with other payments for extra responsibilities such as convenorships or work on the joint police board, means that councillors can easily double their basic salary of just over £16,000, and according to the newspaper 52 of Glasgow's 79 councillors receive more than the basic salary.
The rationale for these organisations is that they provide better services to the public and are more cost-efficient, and the extra payments for councillors are justified on the basis of the scrutiny that these arms-length bodies require.
So if councillors require additional remuneration for holding these organisations to account then does that mean that the functions they perform weren't being properly scrutinised while performed in house by local authorities? Perhaps that's why the services they provided were inadequate and inefficient. But it's certainly an interesting way to boost councillors' pay packets - hive off an activity from the council into an arms-length body and then pay councillors for overseeing it!
Of course, in the grand scheme of things this story isn't exactly of earth-shattering importance, but there didn't seem to be any mention of it on the blogosphere last week, despite the chance to make some party political capital out of it - every little helps, as Tesco tells us! Ah, but the MSM and blogs were abuzz with debate about the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Or could it be that the silence was due to the fact that both Labour AND SNP councillors are doing very nicely out of these sca...ahem...schemes?
On the English Question...
10 hours ago
9 comments:
Agree 100%!
Would it be better if SNP Councillors didn't take a place on these outside bodies, and allowed Labour to run them without scrutiny?
Or do you think SNP Councillors to sit on them but refuse to accept the money?
I'm not trying to be defensive on this at all, but I'm interested in what you would do?
Over on my blog I suggest that these at arms length companies contribute funds to the overall budget for Councillors at the start of the year, that way it is a fairer and far more equitable process.
BellgroveBelle, of course I agree that scrutiny is important, but as I think DA said on his/her blog the payment arrangements don't look transparent and if Westminster MPs were gaining extra remuneration in a similar manner then they'd be on the front page of the Daily Telegraph!
As I alluded, it almost seems as if they're getting extra dosh for doing what would have been undertaken as part of the normal councillor salary if the function had remained in-house.
Then there's the issue of scrutiny per se, but let's not go there ;0)
DA, I tried to post the following on your blog, but couldn't get the comment function to work - the problem was that when the word verification process came up I couldn't see the part of the window where you're supposed to type in the word. I'm using a netbook so I'm not sure if it's my cramped screen that's the problem.
Hello, DA.
Yes, I'm amazed at the several almost uncanny similarities between our two posts on the Glasgow City Council 'arms-length' bodies story in the Sunday Herald.
But I honestly didn't see yours before I wrote mine - indeed, since you've just set up your blog I don't see how I could have seen it. I'd prefer to think of it as 'great minds think alike' rather than 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'!!
And, of course, if I was prone to plagiarism I wouldn't be quite so obvious about it ;0)
Good luck with the blog though - it's good to see another non-aligned blogger.
(Not so sure about the dark grey text on the light grey background - not enough contrast for easy reading.)
30 August 2009 08:26
And I couldn't find an email address either, so thought I would try this way!!
Thanks for your comments Stuart - I'll make some amendments.
I agree on the point about transparency and keeping things in-house.
All our Councillors should have anything they receive on their declaration of interests, but that doesn't really go far enough.
Bellgrovebelle.
In an ideal world councils wouldn't feel the need to perform the first step to privatising these services, and that councils would have been doing their job in a professional manner in the first place. However we have these bodies and that is where we are, and councils feel that they can't perform these tasks addequetely. Which kind of begs the question why do we elect councillors in the first place?
I do think that coucillors shouldn't be paid to take these posts.
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