DUDLEY Council has scrapped plans to pay backbenchers to promote issues including equality and tourism within the authority.

A meeting of full council on October 21 had been asked to consider introducing ten ‘member champions’ to keep selected subjects ‘at the forefront of council business’.

The plan included a proposal to pay each of the champions £2,500 per year as an additional bonus to their members’ allowance.

The cost was too much for council leader, Cllr Patrick Harley, who ordered the item be removed from the agenda.

Cllr Harley said: “It was an extra layer of finance that the council simply can’t afford at this moment in time.

“If we are reducing the perks we are offering people such as free green waste collection, free hours of car parking and we are restructuring and having to lose staff it didn’t seem appropriate to be giving members extra allowances.”

The size of allowances paid to councillors is set by the Independent Remuneration Panel which is made up of three independent persons.

The panel is supported by the council’s deputy chief executive, the council’s monitoring officer, who is in charge of law and governance, the head of finance and the democratic services manager.

The panel reviews allowances every four years, the basic allowance for a backbencher is currently £12,143 but extra payments are made for doing extra work like committee memberships or being in senior roles.

The ten member champions had been selected equally from the Conservative and Labour parties and Cllr Harley revealed they could have been pocketing an even bigger sum.

He said: “Originally the allowance suggested was £6,000 a year then reduced to two-and-a-half.

“In the current climate it was not tenable to put that forward – that is listening to some aspects of scrutiny.

“When people said ‘why are we doing this?’ we’ve listened and we have withdrawn this.”