Making allowances

The councillors on Cheshire East receive - if I am correctly informed - a basic allowance of around £11,000 per annum.

This is very substantially more than we used to get on the old Borough Council (which I seem to recall was around £4,200), but that's supposed to reflect the much heavier workload on the new authority.

Problem is .....

On the Borough Council I used to expect 2-3 meetings per month, say 25 per year. And figures from Cheshire East show that in the past six months Crewe councillors have been required (on average) to attend 13.6 meetings, or 27 per year. In other words - much the same as on the old Borough Council, but with almost three times the allowances!

And there's a huge range, with some councillors attending as few as 5 or 6 meetings in the past six months. At least we get decent value for money from Terry Beard, who managed to fit in 19 meetings (and a 100% attendance as already noted).