Fact: In the Budget Council Meeting on 10 March 2011 Barnsley Independent Group members proposed that the Councillor's Allowance of £11,000 per year should be cut by 10%.
Labour with Conservative support voted it down out of hand. Labour said that they were worth it (sic); one Conservative member said it corresponded to working for a pound per hour. We do not wish to malign his arithmetic but one pound per hour corresponds to £168 per week if every hour of all seven days is included whereas £11,000 per year corresponds to £230 per week (based on a presumed at two days per week ?).

Of course if councillors worked 37.5 hours per week as many do this corresponds to £6.60 per hour. Cutting this by !0% gives £5.94 the minimum wage.

Fact: Barnsley Council have just purchased a new millstone, Gateway Plaza, and paid £20M for it although this will exceed £25M if agency/consulltancy fees, stamp duty and fitting out are included. There is some doubt that it's worth more than £13M in the currently depressed business property environment. (Only the office space provides benefit and normal buyers would not pay good money for 'no benefit assets'.) Irrespective of whether it is worth the money are the Council in touch with the real world? It amounts to gross insensitivity when massive job cuts are being inflicted on the work-force (reported to be 700 with a proportion of them enforced redundancies). Is it affordable in the current economic climate? Labour have claimed it will save money from 2012 onwards but only £200,000 a year. It has been noted that an increased borrowing of £18.5M was included in the Treasury Management figures provided for the Cabinet Meeting of 23 March 2011. At 2.5%, interest will be going on for £0.5M per year. Has the interest rate been fixed and if so at what premium? With current inflation exceeding 5%, base rate is expected to rise by the end of 2011 and continue rising for some time. The premiums are therefore currently relatively high. A premium of only 1% will amount to £200,000 per year exactly the stated annual savings.

Fact: Barnsley Council have just hived off their Property Management Division to set-up a new company with Norfolk Property Services. Sharing any profits equally it will charge the council £1M per year for its work. What constitutes profits has not been defined which does not build immense confidence. If profit is income from sale of assets this may not be such a good deal; for instance the council has around £80M of saleable assets, if they are sold we would presumabley receive half the profit (i.e. £40M). Whereas if we had sold them before this deal we would have received £80M. To make matters worse we pay £1m per year for the privelidge. Makes sense? Pro Bono?