It is good to learn that Bradford Council is to comply with new Government rules which say that all local authorities must appoint an independent panel to advise on the payments that councillors receive.
There is now widespread public acceptance that councillors should be adequately rewarded for the hours they devote to public duties - and they can be very long hours, if they are doing their job conscientiously. The running of a major local authority like Bradford is an immensely complicated matter. If councils are to attract the right sort of talent, the remuneration has to be worthwhile. The days when an individual's private wealth used to underwrite his (and occasionally her) public service are long gone.
There are some - Councillor Jeanette Sunderland among them - who maintain that councillors are often undervalued. That may indeed be the case, but when it is the councillors themselves who decide their own value, and when the bill for allowances is likely to top £1 million by the year-end in March, it is understandable if some council taxpayers wish that they could have more of a say in the way their money is spent.
The independent panel, containing no councillors or political appointees but including members of the public, would not decide the payments. It would only advise on the level of allowances that it believed to be reasonable. It would still be up to the members of the Council themselves to accept its recommendations.
But the public would surely have increased confidence in a system in which they had been allowed to play a greater part than merely footing the bill.
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