The basic pay for councillors in Sandwell could rise by nearly £600 this year.

Sandwell Council meets next week to discuss vote on upping the basic allowance for councillors by £577 this year to £12,129.

A report by the independent remuneration panel (IRP) – the body tasked with setting councillor allowances – has recommended to Sandwell Council that the money paid to all councillors should increase. 

The panel had recommended in 2022 that councillor pay should increase but when it was put to a vote a few months later, councillors went against the proposals and instead agreed to ‘freeze’ the majority of allowances. 

The panel has also again recommended that the council adopts yearly inflationary increases – up to 4% – as part of 2022’s local government staff pay award. 

In 2022, a pay award of £1,925 was offered to most local government staff across the UK, including those in councils and schools 

The panel’s report said: “[We] felt that their previous recommendation should be reaffirmed to include an inflationary increase linked to staff allowances.

"However, where it is a blanket financial amount agreed nationally, this should be capped at 4% of the member’s basic allowance per annum. This is for a period of 4 years.”

While turning down the chance to increase pay in 2023, councillors also voted to ignore the panel’s recommendation and turn down set yearly inflationary rises.

Sandwell Council is also expected to change its committee structure which means the IRP, which also calculates how much councillors with ‘special responsibilities’ such as the leader and deputy leader as well as chairs and vice chairs of committees should also be paid, will be meeting again to decide on changes to those amounts following the restructure. 

The leader of the Labour-run council Cllr Kerrie Carmichael receives two-and-a-half times the basic allowance for the role – which was £28,584 in 2023/24.

Cabinet members receive £17,150 extra each, the chair of the council’s budget scrutiny committee and the chairs of the planning and licensing committees each receive £11,433 extra while the chairs of other scrutiny committees net a further £9,519. 

The amount that councillors in Sandwell are entitled to has varied over the years with some years seeing £300 and £400 increases with other years seeing an annual rise of £25.

The basic allowance increased by £34 from 2022/23 to 2023/24 with the current pay standing at £11,552 for the year. The basic allowance was £10,619 in 2018/19 and increased by just over £400 the following year to £11,030. 

The following year it again increased by £297 to £11,327 and jumped just £25 in 2021/22. Councillor allowances then increased by a further £166 to £11,518 in 2022/23. 

Sandwell Council’s annual meeting of the council takes place at Oldbury Council House on Tuesday (May 13).