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Councillors can be plunged into poverty overnight and miss out on building up a pension during the prime of their lives, the Lib Dems’ local government spokesperson has warned.
Vikki Slade, who was twice leader of Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole Council before being elected to Parliament last year, said councillors needed a “fair deal”.
Her comments came after LGC launched its Councillors for the 21st Century campaign which is calling on the government to review the system of payment and support for councillors.
She said the issue was becoming “more important” as the government moves towards unitary councils across England.
Councillors lost access to the Local Government Pension Scheme in 2014 under rules introduced by then communities secretary Eric Pickles.
Ms Slade said senior roles held by councillors were “a full time job” yet “for the best years of your life” they are unable to pay into a pension,
“The hours I was putting in were mad – more than a full time job, and yet I wasn’t able to access any sort of pension.
“If we’re going to attract people who aren’t retired and wanting to do this on the side, we have to reflect that these are people who are probably giving up a full time job and either going part time or being full time embedded in a council, and yet their rights are worse than if they worked in McDonald’s on a zero hours contract. That can’t be right.
“For all of my 40s I pretty much had no ability to have a pension.”
She added: “I will forever be cross with Eric Pickles for what he did.”
Ms Slade highighted the financial insecurity that councillors face, giving an example of losing her leader’s allowance overnight when she lost a vote of confidence in 2020.
She said: “I was leader on the Tuesday, and on the Wednesday I was not. I went from having an allowance of £30,000 a year, which was enough for me to live on, on the Tuesday and on the Wednesday I didn’t have it.
“There’s no notice period, there’s no golden goodbye, and if you lose your seat in an election, you’ve spent all that time up to an election fighting to hold your seat, you can’t go doing job interviews for something else.
“I’m not suggesting people carry on being paid after they lose their seat. What I am saying is you’ve got to reflect the fact that people’s circumstances change overnight. And if that is their full time job because they’re a council leader or a cabinet member, or a senior member of a committee, that can push someone into poverty immediately.”
Ms Slade called for better public understanding of “just how hard working councillors are, without putting people off wanting to be a councillor”.
She added: “If we’re going to attract parents, professional people in their 20s, 30s, 40s – even 50s is seen as young in local government – we’ve got to give them a fair deal. And if we’re expecting them to potentially drop to part time work or no work in their other job, the compensation factor has got to be there.”
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