Low pay, over work and tribal politics - why some councillors bow out

Councillors are tasked with decisions on the country's state schools, hiring teachers, providing social work services to the elderly and vulnerable.

They make decisions on multi-million planning applications, funding libraries, issuing licences for taxis and pubs, collecting rubbish and maintaining roads and parks.

Yet many are standing down ahead of the election listing downsides of the role.

In Glasgow - Scotland's largest local authority - 26 councillors are bowing out from a total of 84. In Edinburgh 27 of the 63 are heading off, while in Aberdeen 15 out of the 45 are not seeking re-election. Some of those leaving were elected for the first time in 2017.

Poor pay is among the reasons given. The current salary for an ordinary councillor is £18,604, though committee conveners, council leaders and opposition group leaders receive higher pay.

Labour councillor Maggie McTernan, left, and SNP councillor Anna Richardson, right, pictured outside the city chambers in Glasgow and who are both standing down from Glasgow city council, say the basic pay for councillors should be increased.     Photo Colin Mearns.

Back in January this year, the council umbrella organisation Cosla published a survey which found councillors work on average full-time equivalent hours on their councillor duties (38.6 hours/week), resulting in an equivalent hourly rate lower than the real living wage of £9.90. More senior councillors in receipt of special responsibility allowances worked on average 50.3 hours per week.

Concerns around pay appeared to particularly affect women with financial barriers given by female councillors who stated that they were, or were considering, not standing for re-election in 2022.

It also found that 43 per cent of councillors reported working weekly hours in a paid second job, working on average 24.8 hours per week in this additional employment.

Respondents identified remuneration as a major barrier to diversity and highlighted the difficulties in balancing the workload of a councillor alongside a second paid job that they said "is vital for financial wellbeing".

Launching the research, Cosla President Councillor Alison Evison, pictured below, said: “The current salary for a councillor is £18,604 and that quite frankly does not cut the mustard."

Four months on, Councillor Maggie McTernan, who was elected for the first time in 2017 to Glasgow city council, told The Herald that pay was among the reasons why she chose not to stand for a second term next month. The Labour politician works two days a week for the Church of Scotland to supplement her councillor's salary.

"It's not an amount you can live on. Either you need support from someone else in your household who is bringing in an income or you need to have another job," she told The Herald.

"The challenge is it's a job where you have to work during the day, sometimes in the evenings and sometimes at weekends...There's always more you could be doing."

But she said pay was not the the only reason she was standing down.

She said that while solving residents' problems is rewarding, there was always a sense of a never-ending workload. Committee papers can be 100 to 200 pages long and preparing for a session can easily swallow up a day, she added.

She said caring responsibilities she had would make it difficult to continue with an elected role in local government because of the demands of evening and weekend work.

And she said the "shouty" culture in which politics takes place as another reason why being a councillor was no longer for her.

"I have struggled with the culture of politics," she said.

"I absolutely think politics should be about contesting ideas both within your party and with other parties, but I have found the antagonist aspect of politics difficult.

"In council committees you can find everyone in agreement on one motion, and then on the next people are shouting at each other across the debating chamber. I don't think people should be shouted at in the course of their work."

She said that receiving abuse on social media was another ground for moving on and feared the perpetuation of this culture.

"I think there should be a space for people who don't like to engage in that way and who want to do things differently," she added.

Councillor McTernan is moving to a new job working for Elect Her, supporting more women into elected positions in parliament and local councils.

"I will be supporting women to stand for election who I won't be voting for because I disagree with them but I still want to see them in politics. They can be opponents but also allies by working on some issues together."

She is saddened too to draw a close to her career in the council.

"If you go back to the municipal Victorian era and into the twentieth century being a councillor was considered a voluntary position. Rich, older, white, men got to do," she said.

"And today the typical councillor is still a white man in his fifties."

Her assessment is borne out by an Improvement Service survey on the make up of Scotland's councillors from 2017 to 2022 which found the typical councillor is a married white male, aged 50-59.

Councillor McTernan said making the role more professional with a higher salary would make it more attractive to a wider range of people and lead to a stronger set of local representatives.

As convener for sustainability and carbon reduction on Glasgow city council, SNP Councillor Anna Richardson is paid £35,000. She is heading to a new job in the civil service and said pay was not her reason for leaving.

However, she agreed with Councillor McTernan that £18,604 is not a sufficient wage for a backbench councillor.

"I think if we need to tackle that. I think if we expect councillors to work full time, which you do have, we need to pay them appropriately," she said.

Councillor Richardson pointed to work/life balance and the highly partisan political culture as aspects of the role she found challenges.

"In other walks of life, you can switch off at the end of the day and at the end of the week, but as an elected member you never switch off.

"Even at weekends or picking up kids from school if you are in your ward or in your city you are always aware you could bump into someone who wants to talk to you about things. You are never really off duty.

"There is not really a sense of this is office time, this is my private life."

She said she found aspects of the culture of politics challenging.

"I don't think I am naturally a party political animal. I am keen to make the best policy solutions and always keen to collaborate and work with other people who want to make things happen that will benefit the city," she said.

"There is a really important place in democracy for people...to be able to express themselves when they are not happy about decisions politicians make... but sometimes that does tip into something more challenging.

"One thing I won't miss when I go into my new role will be in the midst of that [debate] all the time and have more of a clear division between my private life and my work."

She added: "One of the things I am concerned about is that while we talk about encouraging more women and other less well represented groups to stand for election and get into local government, we are also talking about how difficult it is and what a toxic environment it is. I think we have to be open about the things we need to change."

Nick Cook, pictured below, a Conservative Councillor in Edinburgh, is also not seeking re-election, in his case after ten years.

"I didn't become a councillor for the money, but after a decade without any substantive pay rise, I'd be lying if it wasn't a factor in me choosing not to continue," said Councillor Cook who also has a job in public affairs.

"As I've progressed in my professional career, being a councillor has simply become less and less worthwhile financially. It is a shame as it can still be a hugely worthwhile endeavour and I feel I've much to give public life."

He added: "The problem with pay... is [it's]leading to candidates that are less able and possibly wouldn't be employable elsewhere or are retired and wealthy so the money doesn't matter. Neither of these things make for representative or effective local government."

Councillor Cook also cited a "tribal" political culture.

"I'd be lying if I didn't feel the Conservative Party had changed since the one I was elected to represent. But so has local government. It has become far too tribal," he said.

"More broadly, too many council chambers have become sort of pound shop parliaments, full of people on all sides that bring issues like the constitution into local issues and don't work with other parties because that isn't how things are done elsewhere.

"National politics has infected local councils and it has led to poor decisions on local issues where, actually, people across the different partied have good ideas on how to tackle local problems. If only people would still work together."

The Scottish Government spokesman said a review of councillors' pay and conditions would be carried out "at pace" after the elections next month.

“Both the Scottish Government and Cosla recognise the need for a review of councillor pay and that this would be an important step towards supporting an increase in the diversity of Scotland’s local elected members," he said.

“We have jointly committed to undertaking an independent review of councillor remuneration. This review will be undertaken at pace to examine the terms and conditions of the councillor role, in particular the current rate of pay.

"The review will commence as soon as possible after the forthcoming local government elections to ensure that terms and conditions truly reflect the responsibilities of the 21st century councillor.”