Elected members on Swindon Borough Council will get an increase in their allowance this year - even though they all voted against one in February.

When the council was setting its budget the independent panel on councillor remuneration had proposed that councillors be offered a 3.8 per cent in the basic allowance – which would rise from  £8,940 for every councillor £340 to £9,287.

But councillors rejected it, voting to keep the allowances where they were – taking no increase  since one in 2021-22.

Since then, the independent panel  has come back to the administration with a new proposal – taking the same percentage increase as the lowest paid members of staff.

The reasoning according to council leader Councillor Jim Robbins is: “The panel is concerned that the allowances paid to councillors needs to be sufficient to attract a diverse representative group to be councillors. And that we are falling behind other authorities, and that if we need to achieve parity in the future there would have to be a huge increase then.”

No figure or percentage increase  was made in the panel’s recommendations, and it depends on the final pay award offered by central government to local authority employees – but Conservative members reckoned the percentage rise could be as much as 5.7 per cent.

That would take the allowance from  £8,940 to £9,449 as a basic allowance for every councillor, with multipliers for cabinet members and chairs of committees.

Those Tory members were not impressed by the proposal, and a couple suggested bad faith on behalf of the administration.

Councillor Daniel Adams said: “We are told there’s never enough money by this administration. There are cuts to the library budget, there’s no Oasis, the list goes on. But now we’re told there a pot of money so they can pay themselves more.”

His colleague, councillor Jake Chandler, said: “This shows misplaced priorities. And it had been deliberately left until after the elections are over.

"Any merit in this decision is completely undermined by the way in which it has been achieved.”

Labour cabinet member Kevin Small criticised the Conservative members for suggesting that the members of the panel had been involved in a deal with the administration to bring back the pay award after elections.

He also called them hypocrites and said cited several years in the last decade when cuts had been made by a Conservative administration which had also approved increases to councillors’ allowances.

Cllr Robbins said: “We have decided not to oppose the independent panel’s recommendations or to change them.

“I will be writing to the Secretary of State for local government to say this system is not the best. I think it would be much better to have the independent panel make its recommendation and that’s it – it doesn’t come back to this chamber for us to approve. What the panel recommends is implemented.”

The recommendations of the panel were approved by council with Labour and Liberal Democrat votes defeating Conservatives who voted against.