At this week's meeting of Salford City Council it is being proposed to remove from the city's constitution a clause requiring councillors to legally declare arrears in Council Tax payments.
The current constitution states: "Any councillor who is two or more months in arrears with their Council Tax payments (even if a liability order hasn't been granted) has a legal duty to make a declaration. The process of gaining a court order for non-payment can take less than two months to go through so legal action could in theory commence before the statutory period of 'two months in arrears' is reached and has to be declared."
The Council believes that this "goes beyond the requirements set out in s.106 of the LGFA 1992", and is proposing to change it to:
"Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 places a duty on a councillor to declare any failure of payment (as above) if they attend any meeting involved in setting the Council Tax rate for the local authority. They must abstain from any vote involved in the setting of the Council Tax rate until they are no longer in arrears. If a councillor fails to make the declaration and/or makes a vote they are not entitled to then they commit an offence. This is subject to a fine of up to £1,000 per breach."
It's a subtle change but it appears now that they only have to declare non-payment if "they attend any meeting involved in setting the Council Tax rate for the local authority". If they decide not to attend the meeting, no-one will know if they have failed to pay Council Tax, presumably.
Recently, a Freedom of Information request made by Levenshulme News revealed that, in Salford, twelve reminders were sent to three councillors in 2019-20 and two were barred from voting on the budget.
Initially the Council tried to hide this information arguing that it was exempt "in respect of personal information where its disclosure would breach the Data Protection Act".
Following an internal review, the Council still wouldn't name the councillors concerned as "to do so would...be unfair" for a late payment rather than a non-payment, but did eventually give the figures.
Should the public know which fine upstanding councillors are not paying Council Tax, or are late in paying? Hopefully there will be a discussion on it at next week's Council meeting, rather than it being nodded through...
* The Council is also proposing to change the constitution allowing chief officers to authorise payments up to £150,000 without it going to a councillor committee, an increase from the current £100,000
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