£700,000 paid out to Councillors

Top claimant: Council Leader Alan Taylor received £30,000 in Council allowances last year.

Rochdale Councillors received more than £700,000 in allowances from Rochdale Council in the last financial year.

Although councillors are volunteers and unpaid, they receive payments to help meet the costs of representing their communities across the four townships of Rochdale, Pennines, Heywood and Middleton.

Councillors received a basic allowance of £7,644 to cover all travel they may incur when undertaking duties within the borough, subsistence and a contribution towards land line telephone costs. This amount will remain the same in 2009/10 after councillors voted for a freeze on all allowances.

The Council pays allowances for special responsibilities and decide the levels of all the categories of allowance they pay. Special responsibilities include being Leader of the Council or Leader of the opposition parties, being chairman of a committee, or taking lead responsibility for dealing with particular areas of work.

Council Leader Councillor Alan Taylor was top allowance earner at £30,649, following by deputy leader Irene Davidson at £19,283. Fellow cabinet members Ted Flynn, Dale Mulgrew, Mohammed Sharif and Keith Swift each collected more than £18,000.

Labour leader Colin Lambert claimed £17,629 and his Conservative counterpart collected £16,902.

Allowances are also paid by the Police and Fire and Rescue Authorities, Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund Committee to councillors who are nominated to work with these external bodies. These allowances are paid by the respective authorities and not the council.

As the Council's representative on the Police Authority board, Councillor Barbara Todd was paid £13,000 to complement her £7,931 council allowance. Councillors Peter Clegg and Peter Rush were given around £4000 by the Fire and Rescue Authority. While Councillors Zulfiqar Ali, Peter Davison, Alan Godson and Alan Taylor were paid £4418, £4152, £3648 and £841 respectively for their roles on the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority. Council William Hobhouse was paid £1335 for his role on the Greater Manchester Pension Fund Advisory Committee.

Malcolm Allan of the Independent Remuneration Panel for Members Allowances said: "Allowances are linked to the average earnings of residents in the borough and compared with those of other councillors in the region.

"Expenses and allowances are an emotive issue and openness on this matter is clearly important to local residents.

"We use a formula to calculate the allowances using the latest data. We regularly review the formula as well as the duties of councillors and the time they spend on council business."

Details of all the allowances paid to members of the council between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009, together with allowances paid to councillors by external organisations, will be provided as attached files within this news story soon.

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