A PLAN to freeze councillors’ allowances from the coming financial year’s budget has been criticised for not going far enough.

Stockton Borough Council’s powerful cabinet committee recommended freezing councillors’ allowances at the same time as raising the council tax by 1.9 per cent at a meeting earlier today.

But at a time when a further 150 jobs are likely to be shed by the authority in the coming year, one councillor, Mark Chatburn, said more should be taken from councillors’ “pay”.

The cabinet committee’s proposals for the 2014/15 budget will be put before the full council on Wednesday, February 26 where they are likely to be ratified.

However, Coun Chatburn, the authority’s only UKIP councillor, said the council should this year take up a Government offer to receive a grant worth 0.9 per cent of the budget and actually cut councillors’ allowances.

He said: “I could understand it (rejecting the Government offer of money to freeze council tax) in previous years because it wouldn’t go on the base rate, meaning we’d need to ask for a really steep increase the following year. But this time the Government has said it would offer the same deal the following year.”

Turning to the issue of councillors’ allowances, Coun Chatburn, who attended the cabinet meeting as a non-member, said: “We’ve made 720 job cuts and there’s another 150 to go.

"The councillors’ allowance budget is worth about £800,000 a year. If we made a cut of 10 per cent to the allowance and did away with special allowances for political party group leaders and the like, we could save about £120,000, enough to save the jobs of six people.”

Leader of the council, Bob Cook, Labour, recommended the proposals to the cabinet, pointing out that the Government offer still only ran until next year and the council’s policy of looking to make long-term budget savings through capital investment had served it well.

“Making short-term decisions is not the right way, but the wrong way to run a council,” he said.

The council has been dealing with cuts in Government funding. In 2010/11 Stockton council received £120m from the Government but that is estimated to be £53m by April, 2018, a reduction of 56 per cent in cash terms, or 74 per cent when inflation is taken into account.

This will be the third year Stockton councillors’ £9,300 allowance has been frozen and last year some senior councillors had a four per cent cut. Darlington councillors receive £8,207 and Hartlepool councillors receive £5,767 basic allowance.