Reform Derbyshire council dismisses recommendation to restore opposition Tory leader’s reduced allowance

Derbyshire County Council Leader, Councillor Alan Graves, Taken by BBC LDR Jon Cooper.

Derbyshire County Council’s Reform UK administration has dismissed an independent panel’s recommendation to restore the opposition Conservative Leader’s Special Responsibility Allowance after the council had previously won a vote to reduce it by £6,280 for the current financial year.

The controlling Reform UK councillors deployed their majority to win a vote at a full council meeting on July 15 to uphold the reduction to opposition Conservative Group Leader Cllr Alex Dale’s SRA despite the recent findings of an Independent Remuneration Panel which had recommended the allowance be restored to its original amount.

Reform Council Leader, Cllr Alan Graves, told the meeting: “I want to be clear this is not personal. Cllr Dale has represented his group’s interests robustly and I respect that. It’s about ensuring allowances in this council are set in proportion to responsibility consistently for every group all of the time.”

Councillors in key roles receive SRAs alongside their separate Basic Allowances and the council agreed to freeze both across the board for the 2026-27 financial year at the 2025-26 level with the exception of an SRA reduction for the role of the main opposition leader.

Cllr Graves originally introduced the motion to reduce the main opposition group leader’s SRA at a meeting in March as part of overall plans to freeze all councillors’ separate Basic Allowances in light of ongoing financial pressures, the cost of living crisis, the prospect of Local Government Reorganisation and after considering a previous Independent Remuneration Panel’s advisory report.

But the Reform administration was accused in March of an ‘ambush’ after forcing through the original motion and a vote with hardly any warning to reduce Cllr Dale’s SRA by a third from £18,840 to £12,560 for the 2026-27 financial year from April 1st, 2026.

This was based on a calculation of Cllr Dale’s normal SRA at 45per cent of the Council Leader’s annual SRA being reduced to 30per cent of the Council Leader’s annual SRA for 2026-27 which has left Cllr Dale with a £6,280 reduction for the current financial year.

Despite a recent Independent Remuneration Panel review and its fresh recommendation to restore Cllr Dale’s SRA , Cllr Graves once again argued Cllr Dale’s SRA should remain at its reduced amount.

Cllr Graves said: “Since the elections of May 2025 the main opposition group has lost two councillors and now represents around 15 per cent of the council’s membership. Special Responsibility Allowances exist to reflect the responsibility being discharged. When the group a leader leads reduces, shrinks close to a sixth, it’s reasonable for the chamber to ask what the role now warrants.”

However, the IRP’s latest report stressed it had received no evidence on why the allowance was thought to be too high so they could see no justification for lowering it and the IRP stated that the SRA should reflect the importance of the main opposition leader’s role.

Despite Cllr Graves’s argument that the size of the main opposition group had reduced, the IRP considered that the workload and time commitment for the Conservative Group Leader’s role had not diminished.

The IRP had also been concerned the decision to reduce Cllr Dale’s SRA had been made at a council meeting without any consideration by the panel which led to its review during May and June because the IRP felt that any proposed changes should first be considered by the IRP in a methodical and evidence-based way.

Its report stated: “The panel was disappointed and rather surprised not to be consulted in advance of such a decision, particularly as the Special Responsibility Allowance only affected one opposition councillor.”

The IRP acknowledged, however, that it was not possible to draw any other substantial conclusions by comparing varying approaches to allowances across neighbouring councils because Nottinghamshire and Lancashire pay significantly more than Derbyshire while Leicestershire and Lincolnshire pay less.

It recommended that the SRA paid to the leader of the main opposition group should be increased from 30 per cent to the original 45 per cent of the Council Leader’s Allowance to recognise that the level of workload and responsibility had not changed and that the previous rate of 45 per cent was considered to be appropriate.

However, Cllr Graves said: “Under 2003 regulations we are required to have regard to the pnael’s recommendations. We are not, however, required to adopt them and on this occasion I do not believe we should.”

But Cllr Graves did agree with the IRP’s additional recommendation that the SRA paid to the role of Cabinet Support Member should be reduced from 18per cent to 6per cent of the Council Leader’s Allowance after he too had put this proposal to the panel to support flexibility in appointing additional CSMs without increasing costs to the council.

Cllr Dale told the meeting that he had welcomed what he described as a ‘thorough, independent, evidence-based review’ from the IRP and he stressed that councillors should not determine their own allowances.

He added: “They can see no justification for lowering it. They were disappointed and rather surprised at the approach of the Reform administration in taking this forward and really I think that’s significant because it demonstrates that the decision taken in March was not supported by independent evidence.

“It was a politically vindictive decision in my opinion and I think that is the outcome you reach when you get to it.”

Cllr Dale added: “It’s not about me. It’s not about my role in particular. It’s about how we recognise the importance of opposition in a democratic organisation and a healthy and effective opposition is absolutely fundamental to good Local Government and we have to have robust scrutiny and that benefits administration. It benefits this council to have a proper opposition that can function in a proper way.”

The Conservative Group Leader has also previously questioned why the Reform administration does not put its ‘money where it’s mouth is’ and reduce the Leader, Deputy Leader, Cabinet Members, and Chairs of Committees’ allowances by a third.

However, the council, which includes a majority of the controlling Reform UK administration, voted by 34 councillors in favour of maintaining Cllr Dale’s reduced SRA, with 20 votes against and four abstentions.

Conservative Cllr Wayne Major’s call for an amendment requesting the number of SRAs a councillor can claim be limited to one only was outvoted and lost.

Cllr Major said he does worry that the Reform UK administration is ignoring a well thought out IRP report ‘out of spite’.

He told the Reform councillors: “It’s important those who have power treat those who do not fairly and I would ask you to reflect on that.”

Independent Cllr Ruth George urged the council to ‘not play playground politics with each other’s allowances’ because the authority should be addressing more serious matters such as children’s care and adult social care.

Liberal Democrat Tom Snowdon said that decisions affecting allowances should be put to external independent panels, and fellow Liberal Democrat Ed Fordham said the IRP’s report should be accepted and the matter should not continue to be discussed when the council should instead be considering the budget and service delivery.

Labour Cllr Damien Greenhalgh said the IRP exists to avoid this kind of debate and if there is a proposal to change councillors’ SRAs it should go to the IRP and amending its recommendations is not the right thing to do.

Green Party Cllr Rachael Hatchett said refusing to accept the IRP’s recommendations reflects badly on the council.

Labour Cllr Anne Clarke said: “Members’ allowances should not be open to change at the whim of whatever group is in control. The council has to take regard of the panel’s report.”

But Reform UK Cllr John Lawson argued the council’s Reform administration does take advice from outside bodies but the power rests in the council’s hands and it is responsible for making decisions.

Cllr Graves also criticised Conservative Cllr Nigel Gourlay for previously comparing the Reform UK administration’s decision to reduce Cllr Dale’s SRA to ‘fascism’ and as a strategy to make the opposition ‘poorer, quieter and easier to ignore’.

The Council Leader, Cllr Graves, said: “Fascism is not a Special Responsibility Allowance moved from 45per cent to 30per cent by a recorded vote of elected members in public in this chamber followed by an independent panel review that this council is now debating in the open.”

He added: “Comparing a lawful transparent decision of this council to an ideology responsible for the death of millions doesn’t strengthen scrutiny. It cheapens the word to the people to whom it may still mean something.”

The IRP had previously noted at the beginning of the year that the position regarding public finances had not improved over the last year and that the council was still required to find significant savings to produce a balanced budget.

It had recommended, at that time, there should be no change to councillors’ Basic Allowances for 2026-27 and that SRAs should also remain at the 2025-26 level.

The Council Leader’s SRA remains unaltered at the 2025-26 level at £41,868, now more than three times Cllr Dale’s, and the Deputy Leader Cllr Stephen Reed’s SRA remains at 75 per cent of the Council Leader’s at £31,398.

SRAs for all other key council positions will remain unaltered at the same level at which they stood in 2025-26 as per the Reform administration’s decision to freeze allowances.

The council also previously agreed that the saving in allowance normally paid to the leader of the main opposition group should be transferred from the Member Allowances’ budget to the Member Community Leadership Scheme fund which is used to support the community.

It also agreed to forgo a recommended cost of living increase to councillors’ Basic Allowances and to transfer the equivalent funds to the MCL scheme.