Glasgow Top Ups
The Herald ran an excellent letter the other day - from a Glasgow reader - who rightly condenmed the Labour-led City Council for its practice of 'topping up' the pay of councillors - who sit on 'arms length organisations'.
Regular readers will be familiar with this subject - which essentially involves Glasgow City Council paying its councillors twice for doing the same job - at a cost of @£260,000 to the public purse.
So well said Mr Thomson - whoever you are.
A welcome end is in sight to system of political patronage
"You report moves by the Scottish Government to formally end the much-criticised system of local authorities rewarding councillors with additional payments for representing the council on the boards of arm’s-length external organisations, also known as Aleos (“Council double pay axed”, The Herald, June 2).
Such belated action can come as no surprise. That Glasgow City Council was singled out as the main culprit is equally unsurprising, given that Glasgow is the only council in Scotland with a formal policy to pay councillors additional remuneration for serving on Aleos. The Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee (SLARC) had recommended in their report in March that such payments should be ended.
With the council leader, Gordon Matheson, taking no action over the matter, it shows how increasingly isolated the top team at City Chambers have become. The council will now be forced to end the system that many have identified as nothing other than reward for political patronage.
It will be of interest to see how many of the councillors currently serving in these posts will continue to do so without the supplementary payments. Without the additional financial incentive, the expectation must now be that councils throughout Scotland with Aleos will be obliged to ensure that only the most suitably qualified councillors are nominated for such roles and that such appointments are independently scrutinised. Such corporate governance backstops are already employed successfully in the private sector and for appointments made to Scottish Government agencies.
At the same time, the role of Aleos is likely to be examined in the forthcoming report from the Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services. Aleos must either prove themselves to be a vital part of squeezing more from less in the tight spending environment we are currently entering, and if so be aggressively rolled out nationally. Or, be seen as nothing more than an example of local government excess at its worst.
More disturbingly for local democracy are the findings contained within the SLARC report that the average councillor is white, male and aged 54. Meanwhile, the Electoral Reform Society identified that in the 2007 local government elections, only 21.6% of councillors being elected were women. This outcome has shown little change in the progress of diversity in those representing local communities over the previous decade.
With the battle lines already drawn for the local elections next May, it is perhaps already too late to address this electoral imbalance, but it is clearly necessary for Holyrood to take note. After all, 22 of the new intake of MSPs came from the ranks of local councillors, which in itself is hardly a ringing endorsement of diversity within the Scottish Parliament.
Douglas A Thomson,
Glasgow."
Regular readers will be familiar with this subject - which essentially involves Glasgow City Council paying its councillors twice for doing the same job - at a cost of @£260,000 to the public purse.
So well said Mr Thomson - whoever you are.
A welcome end is in sight to system of political patronage
"You report moves by the Scottish Government to formally end the much-criticised system of local authorities rewarding councillors with additional payments for representing the council on the boards of arm’s-length external organisations, also known as Aleos (“Council double pay axed”, The Herald, June 2).
Such belated action can come as no surprise. That Glasgow City Council was singled out as the main culprit is equally unsurprising, given that Glasgow is the only council in Scotland with a formal policy to pay councillors additional remuneration for serving on Aleos. The Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee (SLARC) had recommended in their report in March that such payments should be ended.
With the council leader, Gordon Matheson, taking no action over the matter, it shows how increasingly isolated the top team at City Chambers have become. The council will now be forced to end the system that many have identified as nothing other than reward for political patronage.
It will be of interest to see how many of the councillors currently serving in these posts will continue to do so without the supplementary payments. Without the additional financial incentive, the expectation must now be that councils throughout Scotland with Aleos will be obliged to ensure that only the most suitably qualified councillors are nominated for such roles and that such appointments are independently scrutinised. Such corporate governance backstops are already employed successfully in the private sector and for appointments made to Scottish Government agencies.
At the same time, the role of Aleos is likely to be examined in the forthcoming report from the Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services. Aleos must either prove themselves to be a vital part of squeezing more from less in the tight spending environment we are currently entering, and if so be aggressively rolled out nationally. Or, be seen as nothing more than an example of local government excess at its worst.
More disturbingly for local democracy are the findings contained within the SLARC report that the average councillor is white, male and aged 54. Meanwhile, the Electoral Reform Society identified that in the 2007 local government elections, only 21.6% of councillors being elected were women. This outcome has shown little change in the progress of diversity in those representing local communities over the previous decade.
With the battle lines already drawn for the local elections next May, it is perhaps already too late to address this electoral imbalance, but it is clearly necessary for Holyrood to take note. After all, 22 of the new intake of MSPs came from the ranks of local councillors, which in itself is hardly a ringing endorsement of diversity within the Scottish Parliament.
Douglas A Thomson,
Glasgow."
