Magic AM

More and more councillors in South Yorkshire are claiming a council pension even though the job is voluntary.

According to the Tax Payers Alliance for every £5 spent in council tax £1 goes towards the Local Government Pension Scheme; they also found that twenty more councillors had signed up to it last year.

Sheffield City Council saw the greatest increase, with ten more enrolling in the last financial year taking the total number of councillors signed up to the scheme to 45. In Rotherham there are now 19 members who've enrolled; up two from 2009/2010. In Doncaster the figure is 24 up from 16. Only Barnsley Council didn't see an increase; they have 10 councillors signed up.

Andrew Allison is from the Tax Payers Alliance:

"The councillors' job is a voluntary job and therefore they are not employees of the council, of which they are a member. They are elected to the council and they're only paid an allowance to cover their time; they really shouldn't be on this pension scheme.

"It should only be full-time employees at the council who should be paying into the local government pension scheme at all.

"This is unfair to taxpayers, who tend to be paying more through their taxes into their council's pension scheme than their own pension."  

Councillor Jahangir Akhtar is from Rotherham council - he's not signed up on the scheme but defends those who are:

"I think that councillors put in a lot of work in and a lot of it is unpaid. If you look at the salary levels of councillors they're below the national minimum wage anyway. If people added up the amount of hours they put in and the vast amount of councillors that carry out duties, then I think they'd see we get great value from our councillors.

"Its not true that councillors are just on the gravy train. Councillors do a tremondous amount of work, day in and day out. They not only deal with their surgeries, they support community organisations; and that's apart from managing the budgets and trying to deliver the best service to their residents."  

Doncaster Council's Chief Executive, Jo Miller, said:

"It is not our decision to make on whether or not councillors or staff join the pension scheme, it's a personal choice. Pensions are part of our employee costs which is the same for any local authority in the country.

"Whilst it may appear we have high pension costs, in actual fact only a fraction of this (5%) is from our overall budget. The average pension in payment from the LGPS is around £4,000 a year which certainly isn't gold-plated."  

Meanwhile Julie Toner, Sheffield City Council’s Director of Human Resources, said:

"We are legally obliged to provide the option of a pension for all Council employees and Councillors, and the decision about whether to take this option rests with each individual.

"What we would point out is that the salary for Councillors is very low, and in some cases the pension option may make it possible for someone to go into politics who otherwise would not have been able to for financial reasons. It is also worth noting that pension contributions for elected members currently makes up just 0.2% of our total pensions spend as a Council."