Councillors at Belfast City Hall have denied themselves a pay rise for the fourth year in a row, and have agreed that the power to set their wages should go to an “outside” body.
Elected representatives at a Belfast City Council committee meeting this week all agreed to a Sinn Féin proposal to give powers over their pay grade to a body within the council but not involving elected representatives.
They also agreed to write to Stormont, where the legislation on councillor pay sits, to ask for a new independent body overseeing remuneration.
In the present system, councillors can vote to give themselves a pay rise every year by considering amendments to the council’s scheme of allowances – which covers basic allowance, special responsibility allowances, and dependents’ carers’ allowance.
Belfast Council has not agreed an increase in elected representatives’ basic allowance and special responsibility allowances since March 2021, although they agreed to increases in the dependents’ carers’ allowance every year.
This week at the council’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee meeting, council officials asked councillors to consider whether they wished to increase the basic allowance paid to each elected representative from £15,486 per annum to £17,456, with effect from 1 April, 2024.
Officials also asked the committee whether it wanted to increase the total maximum special responsibility allowance from the current £117,774 per annum to £132,751, also backdated to last April, and approve an increase to the rate of dependents’ carers’ allowance in line with the national living wage for 2025 to 2026.
Basic allowance is the amount, determined by law, which all councillors are entitled to, while special responsibility allowance is the amount paid to councillors who have extra duties, for example, the chairmanship of a committee. Chairperson or Mayor allowance is the amount paid to councillors who have been elected as Lord Mayor or Deputy Lord Mayor.
For example, Sinn Féin councillor Ryan Murphy, the former Mayor, in 2023 to 2024 got a basic allowance of £15,486, a special responsibility allowance of £778, a mayoral allowance of £28,517, equalling a total personal allowance of £44,781.
He also received allowances for travel and subsistence of £2,830.
At the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee meeting this week, Sinn Féin councillor Ronan McLaughlin said: “For many years this has been refused. I believe I speak for the majority of parties, if not all parties, in saying we fundamentally don’t believe that we as councillors should be in a position to decide any of our pay increases or expenses. That should not come to our committee rooms, it should not have the involvement of any councillor whatsoever.”
He proposed the council set up a “remuneration committee” within the council, which would not include any elected representatives. He said: “At a cursory glance, it probably should include the Chief Executive, the head of HR, the City Solicitor and the Director of Finance, and they would have full delegated authority in relation to councillors pay and remuneration. It would not be subject to any (elected representative) committee’s approval.”
He added: “This is not a perfect solution, but we are dealing with a case in which we do not have the relevant primary legislation from the department for this to be an independent process.”
He proposed writing to the relevant Stormont minister stating that Belfast Council’s desire was for a full independent body to look at the matter. He said: “The decision should be taken out of councillor’s hands, where it should never have been in the first place.”
DUP Councillor Sarah Bunting said she agreed with Councillor McLaughlin, and added: “There are not very many, if any jobs, in this place where you can decide your own allowances and wages, and to put it on us I believe is wrong. We did write to the (Stormont) Department previously to state we thought this should not be in councillors hands.”
She said: “It has been four years since a pay increase, and for some of our councillors, it is their only job. It is not fair on them that they are still receiving the same rate we had in 2021. The cost of living has been there for them as well, and they have bills to pay.”
Council officials will write to Stormont and return with a report on a potential new body within the council with powers over remuneration.
All individual elected representatives’ allowances in Belfast Council for 2023 to 2024 can be found here https://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/council/your-council/councillors-allowances