RETIREMENT
NOW COUNCILLORS JUMP ON PENSIONS GRAVY TRAIN
Greedy councillors are making off with taxpayers money
By Gabriel Milland Political Correspondent
TAXPAYERS are paying tens of millions of pounds into lavish pensions for councillors, the Daily Express can reveal.
Local authorities across the country are signing up for the scheme – which offers final salary pensions funded by council tax.
Some 40 per cent of 20,000 councillors are believed to be in line to pocket inflation-proof allowances worth thousands once they retire. No official figures are collected on the cost of the perk, but estimates put the total burden at a minimum of £50million a year – for people whose post is supposed to be part-time and voluntary.
The sum is on top of pensions for council staff, which currently cost taxpayers around £4.6billion a year.
Councillors’ pensions hit the headlines in North Somerset where 13 members have signed up. Deputy leader Elfan Ap Rees will cost local taxpayers £4,239 in 2008/9 for his Local Government Pension Scheme membership on top of his annual “allowance” of £20,000.
|
|
Taxpayers are having to fund the pensions
|
Tory Cllr Rees said: “It is a private matter. I think it is prying into people’s private affairs.”
In Lincolnshire, county councillors voted to collect up to £200,000 this year in pension contributions.
Labour leader Rob Parker boasted the move had received cross-party support. “We need to be able to attract new members to stand for the council,” he claimed.
Out of the 78 councillors on Hampshire County Council, 30 now pay into the pension scheme.
Labour changed the law to allow councillors to join the scheme soon after getting into power in 1997. But the changes only came into effect in 2003. Senior councillors on many authorities routinely get £70,000 a year in allowances.
A councillor only has to average 15 years’ service on an allowance of £25,000 to net a tax-free lump sum plus a weekly pension for life of £90.
That is as much as the basic state pension, which is all many retirees have to survive on. Just a few years service is enough to earn a tidy sum for life. A councillor whose allowance is £10,000 gets £625 per year tax free after only five years’ service, in addition to a lump sum of £1,875.
The revelation comes as hard-pressed families struggle with council tax bills of £1,200 that have more than doubled under Labour. Christine Melsom of pressure group IsItFair? said: “Most of these people will already have had good pension schemes.
“If they want pensions they should have to pay for them themselves.”
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “These gold-plated pensions are totally outdated and utterly unaffordable. It is hypocritical for councils to plead poverty when so many councillors are cashing in at the taxpayers’ expense.
“Families struggling to pay record council tax bills should not be forced to fund extremely generous pensions for councillors when we can barely afford pensions ourselves.”
Shadow Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said: “With more summer strikes from local government workers looming this will be a bitter pill to swallow.”
Video 
