Councillor Joanna Biddolph speaks about the Conservative group's budget proposal to scrap unnecessary special responsibility allowances (SRAs), paid for taking on certain roles in addition to normal councillor duties, to prioritise spending on essential services. She compares the savings to the number of potholes each SRA could fill. You can watch Jo making her points during the debate by watching the council's YouTube channel, see link below.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
We have commented before on the large number of SRAs paid in this borough. The independent panel on the remuneration of councillors in London recommends that no more than 50 per cent of councillors should receive a special responsibility allowance. Here in Hounslow, there are 47 SRAs and 62 councillors. Over 75 per cent of councillors are paid an SRA. By any measure that is excessive.
We want to be responsible about the way we spend our residents’ and business ratepayers’ money and propose to scrap unnecessary SRAs and divert the money into fixing potholes.
Cabinet members have the entire council staff to support them. We cannot see why five of them also need an assistant, from the Labour group of councillors, each of whom will this year receive £9,636 (plus whatever the annual pay increase is). To do what, exactly? We suspect it is a way of keeping Labour councillors on side, shoring up the leader’s wobbly majority.
So, abolish those SRAs, each one of which would fill 182 potholes. Together, the five cabinet assistant SRAs would fix 914 potholes. Imagine the improvement that would bring to our roads and for all road users.
Next, vice-chairmen of area forums. The number of area forums has increased to seven. We are in favour of improving local democracy and making ourselves directly available to residents and business ratepayers. The area forum is one way, though not the only way, to try to achieve that; we proposed other methods in our manifesto.
Area forums meet four times a year. They are supported by officers who do much of the background work. The chairman’s role is reasonably significant. The vice-chairman’s role is much less so. Mr Mayor, I am currently vice-chairman of the Chiswick area forum so I know first-hand what the role entails; it is not about standing in if the chairman is unavailable (which in any case doesn’t merit an extra payment) but about promoting the area forum. Some of this is done by council officers in the PR/communications team including, this time, distributing flyers to residents’ homes. The flyer is produced by staff, based on our programme and wording, and distributed by an outside agency. Vice-chairman work beyond that, even when done assiduously – liaising with local organisations and individuals and encouraging them to come, writing a local press release, encouraging attendance through social media – is without doubt not time-consuming enough to merit an SRA. There are other far more arduous and time-consuming roles for which there is no SRA. So, yes, we propose to abolish the seven area forum vice-chairmen SRAs. That is 51 potholes for each vice-chairman or 357 potholes a year.
The total saving from abolishing these SRAs would fill 1,271 potholes this year – more when the annual uplift has been included in the calculations.
Mr Mayor, we must prioritise essential services, including critical infrastructure needs to improve the quality of our streets – for the benefit of residents, business ratepayers, visitors and people passing through the borough – by fixing potholes instead of prioritising unnecessary SRAs.
Source on the cost of filling a pothole: Asphalt Industry Alliance's 2023 report: ALARM - Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance report; the amounts quoted are based on planned filling rather than emergency filling: https://www.asphaltuk.org/wp-content/uploads/ALARM-survey-2023-FINAL-wi…
Watch the section on special responsibility allowances; Jo starts speaking at around 01.08: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49F7to60bzk
