Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Legal and Democratic Officer

The Panel considered the report of the Chief Legal and Democratic Officer seeking views on the payment of special responsibility allowances to Deputy Leaders of the Council; seeking confirmation of the special responsibility allowance for the Chair of the Planning Committee; and if approved, whether the payment of the SRA’s should be backdated to 16 May 2024.  

The report indicated that Councillor Atkinson, Leader of the Council, had proposed that an SRA be payable to the two Deputy Leader positions due to the additional responsibilities that they would undertake over and above their Cabinet Member responsibilities; that an exercise had been undertaken with Liverpool City Region local authorities (Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool St. Helens and Wirral) to find out if the positions of Deputy Leaders in those authorities attracted an SRA; and statistics about SRA’s made to Deputy Leaders of Liverpool City Region local authorities were detailed in Appendix 1 to the report. 

The report also advised that the Leader of the Council had amended the roles and responsibilities of Cabinet Members and in doing so, had reduced the number of Members on the Cabinet from 10 to 9; that as part of the reallocation of roles, the Leader had agreed that the duty performed by the former Cabinet Member – Planning and Building Control in chairing the Planning Committee be now undertaken by a newly appointed chair of that Committee; and that this would attract a payment of a SRA.  In order to formalise matters, and in accordance with past arrangements, it was recommended that the position of Chair of the Planning Committee attract a SRA of 100% of the basic allowance.

The report also advised that the issues associated with the payment of SRAs to the Deputy Leaders and the chair of the Planning Committee were confirmed at the meeting of the Council held on 16 May 2024; that the Councillors appointed to the roles had been undertaking their additional roles and responsibilities since that date; and sought a decision on the backdating of such allowances to 16 May 2024. 

It was anticipated that overall, if the issues detailed above were approved there would be a saving to revenue costs associated with the Members’ Allowance budget.

Members of the Panel asked questions/commented on the following issues:

·       the reasons why it was deemed necessary to introduce a special responsibility allowance for the position(s) of Deputy Leader

·       the additional workload to be undertaken by the Cabinet Members in their roles as Deputy Leader

·       comparisons between the other Liverpool City Region local authorities and Sefton in terms of population and numbers of elected members serving on such authorities   

·       statistics of SRA’s made to Deputy Leaders of Liverpool City Region local authorities

RESOLVED: That