What worth a councillor?

Ipswich Borough Councillors from all parties work hard for their communities. There are a very few exceptions but in the main we put in hours on casework, reading, attending meetings and training sessions, community events, committee meetings evening and daytime and we are on the end of a phone 24/7.

People have literally laughed when we've told them how much backbenchers receive when they find out it is less than £3800. Most are astonished.

We have refused the recommendations from the independent panel for over a decade and have not had an increase for 10 years.

Had we have taken their recommendations, the remuneration would now be a thousand pounds more a year than we currently receive. This would not have felt right in a time of austerity but I don't know of one single person who has not had a rise in over a decade, if they are still in the same place. Time to stop being embarrassed about this and do what's right, reward where it is due and value what we do.

Furthermore most of us do not claim for travel expenses to and from our meetings, as is our right. My only claims have been for unique travel to the Bournemouth LGA conference a couple of times in 10 years.

Some of us are out of pocket because of the time commitment we have to give (average of 15 hours per week but many do more) and all of us sacrifice family time and leisure on a regular basis. I'd like to think a reasonable person would recognise this and not begrudge us a penny.

I was determined to do something about this and so I contacted the leader of the council who agreed with me that we should have a consensus amongst the leaders of each party, on behalf of our groups.

Even though we can disagree vehemently on how to go about achieving our aims it is not as often as people might suspect. Our influence on national problems is limited but the one thing we must do together is ensure we attract good people to become councillors and that we encourage them from a wide, diverse background. My personal wish is for more young parents. Councillor Jones said at the council meeting that they don't have any special talents. I disagree. All ages have their own special unique talents and wisdom. I think an old wise head with experience of life is equally valuable - just in a different way but I don't want to mix with just wise old heads in my political world.


The point is our low remuneration (one of the lowest for backbenchers but one of the highest for special responsibility) needed addressing and I felt we should value ourselves a bit more than to just take the easy route and ignore the whole thing once again.

Ignoring would've meant in 4 years time at the next review, we would've fallen even more behind and this would be a huge decentivisation, requiring an even bigger increase.

An alternative proposal to the one put forward by the panel, was agreed together which corrected my concerns - increase backbenchers basic allowance and re-calculate the special responsibility allowance to address the inbalance and shrink the gap between the 2.

I was upset with the Ipswich Star yesterday and I said so at the meeting. Cllr Ellesmere and the Mayor both concurred. Their headline did not reflect what was actually going on and all the facts.

I'm looking forward to seeing the follow up and apology in todays paper

Tweeting has it’s daily place but not instead of living, giving and listening.!

There's been a bit of a debate today between the various local parties about use of twitter. One of my colleagues asked a question about councillors using twitter during full council and it was seen as a direct disagreement with myself as I am a prolific tweeter, by the media and Labour..

However what they did not consider is that I can be a prolific user of social media and still agree that tweeting should not happen during full council.

My reasons are:

1) Recipients are only getting one side/opinion and if they are that interested they could attend the full council instead of taking note of 140 characters worth of biased opinion.

2) you can't be listening properly if you are tweeting and we councillors are not allowed to vote unless we have listened to the whole debate.

3) The mayor has asked that mobiles are turned off during debate so if that's the case how can tweeting be different from using it to look at e-mails etc?

4) Most of the tweeting that goes on at Ipswich full council is from councillor Ross who seems to use it to be personal rather than informative so what 'guidelines' are going to come next, about what we can or cannot do? Isn't it just easier to tweet afterwards?

I also would like to categorically confirm that my leader councillor John Carnall has never been against tweeting. In fact he has spoken up for me when a certain Gavin McClure planted worries in people's minds about my tweeting when it was under the name IpswichTories. I changed it to StokeParkCllr so that I could give my own opinions and not be seen to be speaking on behalf of all Ipswich Tories. Fair enough and happy to oblige but it was McClure who put pressure on me about this, not Carnall.

There are a few councillors  who are worried about my blogging,  rather than tweeting, and there's no doubt that it can cause a lot of attention and media press but I enjoy being contraversial and it has brought me thousands of readers. So now I am able to inform through my blog, all my activities and my personality. We are more than just councillors, we are wives, parents, grandparents, professionals, business owners and above all human!

And a final clarification

By an unfortunate set of circumstances I missed yesterdays council because Ben Gummer MP had organised a trip to Westminster for my residents in Stoke Park, the first of many regular visits which will see all his constituents  receive the same opportunity. There was no way John Carnall was going to ask me to choose council over being with my residents and bringing them closer to their MP and Westminster. My job is about the people and they take priority when it clashes with any meetings. Although disappointed about the date he gave his permission immediately.

And It was a wonderful occasion - I was truly grateful to see the House of Lords as well as Commons. I could've tweeted as I went along but I used the time to listen to my residents, take in the history lesson that Ben gave us plus lived in the moment of taking in the splendour of the whole building.

I also missed last council meeting because I was receiving an award for services to young children, again permission given by my leader who understood that it was important to me.

I always attend meetings and if anyone begrudges me those 2 occasions then I can't help them & nor do I want to.

So to conclude, I prefer to live, give and listen  rather than sit, tweet and pretend that I have any real power, as a backbencher, sat at a meeting.