Councillors in Powys County Council consider publishing annual reports

IF councillors want to convince doubting residents that they are value for money they could publish an annual report explaining everything they do.
At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Democratic Services committee on Monday, September 2 councillors received a report explaining how their work is officially recorded and potential tweaks to the system that could help show more of what they do.
The issue was brought up at the council’s annual meeting in May – when councillors noted a salary increase awarded to them by the Independent Remuneration Panel of Wales (IRPW) whic saw the basic salary rise to £18,666.
At that meeting Conservative Cllr Gwynfor Thomas who chairs the council’s Learning and Skills scrutiny committee aired concerns that people criticise the salary paid to councillors without fully understanding their workload, which includes a variety of other non-public meetings and work in their wards.
Cllr Thomas believed that the statutory reporting mechanism doesn’t reflect all the work they do and asked that the Democratic Services committee look into the matter.
Head of business intelligence and governance Catherine James told committee members that a system called Modern Gov is used to note meeting attendance.
Ms James said: “All of the figures for councillor attendance are held on that software.”
This is also published to individual councillors pages on the website.
She explained that work was being done to try and add councillors participation in internal council meetings such as working groups or council boards to these figures,
Local Government legislation in Wales says that county councils need to “make arrangements” that allow councillors to provide an annual report, but it is not mandatory that they do so.
Ms James said: “Members could write a short annual report giving details of their attendance at meetings or a fuller report which provides information on work they have being done out in the constituency which would not otherwise be shown.
“Those reports can be published on the members pages on the website.”
Liberal Democrat Cllr Claire Hill said that this meant that councillors could “champion their own work” if they wanted the public to see it.
Cllr Hill said: “I’m comfortable with the existing arrangement.
“It’s about getting members to take their annual report a bit more seriously and the public to scrutinise that.
“A lot of people say that councillors are a waste of money, but they don’t actually know what we do.
“The public need to be educated on that information and how it can be helpful to work out whether they are getting value for money or not from their councillor.”
She believed this would help “inform” people’s voting intentions at the next local election,
Committee chairman, Powys Independents Cllr Graham Breeze said that the issues raised by Cllr Thomas back in May are within “his gift” to answer in an annual report to his ward residents.
Cllr Breeze said: “The other issue is the way we record being at meetings.
“I don’t think that the percentage way it’s worked out is a fair reflection of the amount of meetings people attend.”
“If you’re not on any committee and you attend five full council meetings (in a year) you’re recorded with a 100 per cent.”
He compared this with another councillor who could be expected to attend 40 meetings a year and miss 10 – and would have a significantly lower attendance percentage despite attending many more meetings,
The report was then noted by the committee and will be brought back for further discussion when the work with Modern Gov is completed. ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​

By BBC LDRS ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​