CALLS have been made to review  special responsibility allowances after it emerged 26 out of 29 Labour councillors were receiving the additional payment.

Councillors, ruling and opposition, are given additional payments over and above their basic allowance — one of the most generous in Greater Manchester — if they have areas of special responsibilities such as an executive member tasked with making decisions or chairing meetings.

Latest publicly available figures show it can mean a councillor receiving between £5,151 and £25,510.19 in a year.

Speaking at a recent council meeting, Cllr Roger Hayes questioned the justification of the number of special responsibility allowances among the ruling party.

The leader of the Lib-Dems said: “We have raised the issue of the large number of special responsibility allowances paid many times in the past and you probably won’t be surprised we hare raising it again.

“It amazes me that it is felt justified that 26 SRA — special responsibility allowances — can be allocated to a group of 29 Labour members at a cost of around £185,000 a year — not all paid by the council but nominated by the council.

“Many see this as a payment to keep the councillors loyal to the leadership, a strategy Jeremy Corbyn might adopt at some stage, but I don’t know “We propose SRAs be reviewed with the objective of making modest annual saving of £60,000.

“Now the last time that Labour was about to lose control of this council in 2004, they cut councillors’ basic allowance by 10 per cent and SRAs by a further 15.8 per cent so we are hopeful we might get support this time.

“We have also consistently proposed that the council should consider reducing the number of councillors to two per ward.

“The council’s function has reduced as have the number of meetings, such has been the cuts to budgets and staff numbers. It must be appropriate also to review number the number of councillors. That would not produce any saving this year, it may not for several years because it has to go to the electoral commission for them to review.

“But the likely saving if they was to implement on that basis what be nearly 300,000 a year — quite a magic number.”

The special allowance payments during the financial 2017/2018 financial year varied from £5,151 to £25,510.19.

Figures show that in recent years the number of SRAs has been around the same.

In Bury, a Labour controlled authority with 30 Labour councillors, 23 have SRA's. That bill comes to £168,548.

Cllr Martyn Cox said: “Cllr Thomas in her speech talks a lot about austerity and as Cllr Hayes pointed out there’s no austerity in SRA — I feel sorry for the three councillors that have not got one!”

In 2017/18 financial year, the basic allowance for a councillor was £11,416, compared to councillors in Bury, who receive £8,370. It was also higher than the allowance given to councillors in Salford, which is a city, which stood at £10,025.04.

The allowance has risen three times since 2009/10.

The basic allowance was among the most generous within the local authorities which make up Greater Manchester. Only Manchester City, Wigan and Tameside councillors get more.

The bill for special responsibility allowance stood at £193,222.23 — higher than Bury but lower than Salford and many other authorities — with the total allowances costing £868,191.72.