Shouldn't Councillors who go to functions for the WBC pay the difference between what we are allowed for reimbursement and the actual cost of the hotel?
Minutes:
Question
Shouldn’t Councillors who go to functions for the WBC pay the difference between what we are allowed for reimbursement and the actual cost of the hotel?
Answer
The Members’ Allowances Scheme, which is contained within the Council’s Constitution, states that Members attending a conference may claim a “reasonable cost of overnight accommodation (e.g. 3* star hotel)”. This is in line with the Officers’ accommodation expenses scheme. However, when anyone makes a choice about overnight accommodation for conferences they need to think about more than just cost. We need to think about convenience, closeness to the conference centre, where attendees attend the event organisers might gather for example, and the safety of being in an unfamiliar place particularly at night-time
I happen to prefer the previous arrangement used by the Council, where there was an upper limit on the amount Members and Officers can claim for conferences. We could ask the Constitution Review Working Group to look at this and put the system back into the Members’ Allowances Scheme and the Officers’ Scheme if Members felt that was correct and make new changes. A scheme perhaps would need to reflect the fact that prices in city centres would be higher than in less urbanised areas or for example in university campuses where I have been to a number of different conferences. For example a 3* hotel in Manchester may be significantly more expensive than a 4* hotel, for example, in Bournemouth. On top of this hotels are known to increase their prices for large conferences so this would also need to be taken into account.
What we do not want is a scheme that stops Members or Officers being able to attend conferences because they are unable to claim for suitable, sensible and safe accommodation when they travel on Council business.
Supplementary Question
Since governors are expected to pay £1 every time they come for training for parking in the car park out here this is something they volunteer for. We are saying that we can spend more money on hotels, £149 possibly more than the allowance would be per night, and this could represent almost 900 governor visits. I would ask you at least if you were preparing not to do this could you give governors a special thing that says “we are governors here for this meeting xxx date and we won’t be paying for the parking this time”, please?
Supplementary Answer
I think this has been raised before and a number of people come here for a number of different reasons to visit the Council offices and it was voted through to charge for car parking in the evening. We could look at it again but the question is who you charge for and who you do not and there will always be a group of people that will be particularly unhappy about being charged for or not being charged for. I can take that away to look at in terms of those who are volunteering their time but equally you could say that our Members who are coming here in the evening are also volunteering their time and the question would then be would they be charged as well. So that I would also put back to you as well.