Mystery of £2,000-a-year council role

Warwickshire County Council’s ruling Conservative group voted on Tuesday to keep the seven ‘special responsibility’ on the face of the recommendation of an independent remuneration panel.

Opposition councillors said they did not understand the role of the spokespeople, when cabinet members or committee chairmen were responsible for policy.

Cllr Julie Jackson (Lab, Poplar) said: “I’m struggling in these times of austerity to understand why we believe it’s appropriate to pay £2,000 each to seven Conservative spokespeople when I would have thought cabinet members themselves are responsible.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Jerry Roodhouse (Eastlands and Hillmorton) said: “It is unclear exactly what the role is. There is an issue about the messages that are being sent out to the people of Warwickshire and our staff.”

The independent panel also recommended councillors should be able to ‘countersign’ each others’ expenses claims.

Cllr Roodhouse said he was “very uneasy” about the idea and complained the independent panel was “fixated” on countersigning.

Defending the role of spokespeople, council leader Cllr Alan Farnell said the more he thought about the idea the more convinced he was about the idea.

He admitted a job description had not been produced, but said their role was to support cabinet members, citing examples of where they had been able to stand in when cabinet members were unwell.

Cllr Farnell (Con, Nuneaton Weddington) compared the way councillors had rejected an earlier panel’s recommendation for increasing the leader’s allowance. He added the leader and cabinet members were “poorly funded”, but said he was happy for allowances to remain frozen until the financial situation had improved.