As Council Leader Blames Clerical Error for 18% Pay Increase
The ongoing row over pay rises for councillors looks set to continue after the local Labour party claimed victory for the "Tory U-turn" on an 18% pay hike.
Responding to earlier criticism, Conservative Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh, claimed his pay rise had "happened by mistake" and was the result of a “clerical error”. He said, "Hammersmith & Fulham's Opposition Leader has jumped in too soon with his attacks over Councillors allowances. The apparent 18% increase voted for in February's Council Meeting was down to a clerical error by Council Officers - and certainly was not intended. In line with all Council staff, this was supposed to have been an inflationary increase, as agreed by the Cabinet - and the error will be rectified at the next Council meeting."
However, Labour councillors have described this as “inconceivable” and say the Tories backed down after their media campaign with the story being detailed on Hammersmith Today.
Labour Cllr. Mike Cartwright said, “Council decisions go through at least three stages of checks by administration councillors before being voted on in a full council meeting. The Leader of the Council would have commissioned the policy and physically signed this decision off before taking it to his cabinet colleagues.
"The cabinet would then have presumably discussed it and decided that they were satisfied to pass it onto the next stage. Only then, would the papers be included on the agenda for the Annual Budget Meeting. At that point, all thirty three Conservative councillors would have the opportunity to read the report and decide which way to vote. The all voted for it and heckled Labour for not doing so."
The row began after Conservative councillors used their majority at a recent Council Meeting to vote through a series of cuts which amounted to £34 million. According to the local Labour party, the cuts include a reduction of £1.4 million for the elderly and sick to get home help, taking £540,000 from the children's, play and youth services, cutting £30,000 of storage facilities for homeless families to keep their belongings and axing £915,000 from the street cleaning service.
But Cllr Greenhalgh denied front line services were being cut saying that a reduction in waste and bureaucracy had allowed Hammersmith and Fulham to make a cut in the tax bill when most of the rest of the country were seeing a rise. The Council is one of only two in the country to cut tax this year.
March 21, 2007