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Attempt to reduce you council cabinet by two to save £38k fails

26 Feb 2025 4 minute read
Flintshire Council Buildings near Mold by Matt Harrop is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Alec DoyleLocal democracy reporter

A bid to force a Welsh council to axe two members of the coalition cabinet to save just over £38,000 by opposition members has failed.

During Flintshire’s budget meeting this week, Hawarden Aston Cllr Gillian Brockley tabled an amendment challenging the council over the expansion of the cabinet in recent years, saying the addition of two new cabinet members had increased the budget for the lead group by 25%.

But the authority successfully argued that the expansion was necessary due to the scale of responsibility within the new roles.

Motion

The addition of portfolios for Economy, Environment and Climate and Transformation – both sharing some responsibility for the reduction of council spending across all departments to tackle its ongoing deficit – has expanded the cabinet from eight members in May 2023 to 10.

In a notice of motion submitted to the council by Cllr Brockley’s Flintshire People’s Voice group, the cost of these two additional roles to the council is £38,266.

“When the Labour Independent coalition is proposing putting council tax up 9.5% it is worth asking where that money is going,” said Cllr Brockley.

“They’ve overseen a 25% growth in salaries paid to cabinet members in just two years.

“Flintshire People’s Voice has tabled a motion to reverse this unnecessary expenditure. They cannot inflict financial pain on ordinary residents while a bloated cabinet spend ever more public money on themselves.

“I move an amendment to the budget that £40,000 be removed from the budget for members pay, to be achieved by reducing the number of cabinet positions by two.

“This additional money for cabinet is unnecessary and a waste.”

‘Important’

The proposal suggested that if approved, the money be used to reduce council tax – saving Flintshire families 1p per week.

Deputy council leader Richard Jones, who is also the cabinet member for Transformation, defended his position.

“Every day I work towards improving this council,” he said. “I’ve been tasked with trying to save this council from a Section 114 which I believe I have done.

“I’m disappointed with the comments. This is important to me because I know that we can’t continue in this way and I have to put every effort into finding those savings through the Transformation programme.”

Caergwrle Cllr David Healey also criticised the amendment, arguing that the complexity of changing how the council works and delivering ever increasing savings required specific attention.

“Speaking as a former cabinet member it dominated my life because of the tremendous workload,” he said.

“Apart from the numerous meetings here, cabinet members must also be represented on various outside bodies and if they cannot attend the agenda for those bodies falls.

“Getting your head around the unprecedented situation which we face financially and pool expertise and ideas is a challenge. We’re going to need that because goodness knows where we are going to go next year.”

Expanded

Liberal Democrat Cllr David Coggins Cogan – representing Gwernaffield and Gwernymynydd – backed the motion to reduce the cabinet.

“It is easy to reduce the figure to a weekly sum and say it’s only a couple of pennies, but we have five chief officers and a chief executive and yet we have a cabinet that far outstrips that.

“We are reducing the funding to departments so they can’t take on extra staff yet the cabinet has expanded.

“I think it is indefensible for the cabinet to expand while the council contracts.”

But Buckley Pentrobin Cllr Mike Peers also defended the expanded roles.

“They are experienced members who have been brought in to do a job,” he said. “We need a lean organisation. We cannot continue as we are. With the Welsh Government continually underfunding this authority we cannot keep relying on the council taxpayer to keep picking up the tab. It’s not sustainable.

“The money is already in the budget, let’s move forward with the cabinet we have, we have to get on .”

Councillors voted against the proposal by 44 votes to 19.


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John
John
9 minutes ago

1p per week saving on council tax? Is that even worth discussing? Not forgetting the extra work done by councilors in the new position had some positive effect as well

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