Rocke
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Straw Poll - Councillors' 'expenses'Last year's ( Apr 08 - Mar 09 ) payments to councillors will soon be published, following resolution in Full Council.
However, the provision of transport ie. use of the chauffeured civic car(s) for councillors is not part of this process.
This produces the anomoly that a councillor such as myself ( who has claimed and received some £236 in travelling expenses ) looks to be 'more expensive' than a councillor who doesn't drive but who exercises their right to use civic transport.
Clearly there are advantages to the Council in some instances ( such as car sharing, ability to do work en route to meetings etc. ), and I'm certain that properly explained the public will understand.
However, I believe that the public has an interest ( some might say the right - and I wouldn't disagree - ) to be informed of all borough resources used by councillors in order to carry out their duties.
I also feel - and no doubt readers of The Gazette will know - that 'value for money' should be a feature of councillors' perceived performance in their representation of the people.
Do you therefore think that the council should not only publish payments made to councillors but also :
* number of meetings attended ;
* number of times civic transport was utilised.
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IAN(boco)jones
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As long as the civic car is used for official council business i see no problem in using both the civic car and claiming legitimate travelling expenses.
after all you can not be in the civic car and on public transport at the same time, (CAN YOU?).
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clem
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Yes to both proposals Rocke,
This info should be made available so that the general public can see that their respected councillors are using civic transport as it was intended and also the number of meetings they have or can attend, in the present climate of Government and the expenses scandal going on, it would be refreshing to see that Blaenau Gwent as a council are being " up-front" as it were !
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Carolyn
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There was an article in he Gwent Gazette a few years back relating to this very thing. It was suggested then that some councillors were using the civic car to make it appear they were claiming less expenses than another councillor. The following year there was a greater uptake of use of the civic car and less claimed in expenses. There was also an idduse of how cost effective this practice was to the public since the hiring of the car, insurance and chauffeur amounted to a greater cost to the tax payer than if they had claimed expenses in the normal way.
There was also a call at the time for IT expenses to be made public and not a separate entity undisclosed in details of their other expenses. I Believe I still have a scanned copy of both these articles on disk somewhere. I was reading the Sir Terry Matthews comments a few weeks ago on litter that caused quite a storm at the time.
I believe that everything related to civic duties, wages and expenses should be made publicly available not with the intention of catching anyone out doing something they shouldn't but this information should be made comprehensively available public to all memebers of the public who are paying for them they should be aware of what they are paying for. If a particular councillor is representing you properly in accordance with money you are paying him/her to do the job and if savings could be made to keep the cost of council tax down and maintain public services. The minutes made available online and at the library are inadequate and far too complex to be understood by the ordinary man on the street it has been said many times before that although these figures are available you would need to be an accountant to make any sense of them. As we can already see the expenses system is wide open to abuse when they are all lumped together as one.
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