A L COULTER, Hon Alderman, County of Devon, of Becket Road, Bovey Tracey, writes:

The unfortunate abuses in respect of financial arrangements for parliamentarians is extremely regrettable. It would appear that the innocent as well as the guilty will no doubt suffer the wrath of the electorate an the whole situation is a truly sorry mess which must be put right without any inordinate delay.

That, it might be thought, is that, However, there are gremlins at the bottom of the local government garden as well that cause concern.

When the local councils – county, city and district – were altered to run as cabinet-type executive administrations, the financial arrangements in respect of councillors' expenses were changed. Rightly, elected councillors should receive appropriate remunerations for their time and effort in order that everyone might be able to offer themselves for election. The allowable expenses have normally been calculated by an expert panel who decide the level of remuneration they consider appropriate for every level of council affairs.

Unfortunately, the instigation of the new allowance system appears to be flawed in that there exists the possibility of members each being able to claim several different accumulative allowances to such an extent that raises serious questions.

In order to learn just how much is paid in allowances/expenses it is necessary to go to each individual council/authority and request the information under the Freedom of Information Act (NB: there is no central point at which all the appropriate information is held).

In 2006­ the 62 members of Devon County Council were entitled to claim 140 different allowances. Forty-two members were also entitled to claim allowances, as members, from other authorities. The number of allowances claimed by individuals varied from one to six per member and the total amounts claimed varied between £10,000 to £69,000 per annum plus cost of travel, subsistence etc.

The total of that year's council tax charge for members' expenses was estimated at £900,000 or more.

Now to 2008/2009 figures which are somewhat more in total.

This year's council tax charge for DCC members' expenses are £980,025 with the individual claims between £11,000 and £70,000 plus costs for travel and subsistence, and for Teignbridge £372,527. There are seven other authorities' expenses included in the county-wide council tax charge which can reasonably be expected to be individually similar to that of Teignbridge. The absolute minimum that Devon council tax payers will cough up will be £4,000,000-plus by the time all the bits and pieces in respect of expenses are included.

You may consider that that is enough, however, further charges are incurred because of 'locality' funds which it is deemed justified to be handed out to 'good causes/worthy projects' by councillors.

In the case of Teignbridge this is a total of £60,000. In the case of DCC, the 'bribery' fund stretches somewhat further – an original £10,000 per member plus an additional fund of £25,000 per member courtesy of the sale of Exeter Airport plus, finally, four funds of £5 million each (again courtesy of the sale of Exeter Airport) from which members can submit bids for worthy projects to be paid for – all before the county council elections. I wonder what the Local Government Ombudsman thinks of that?

There is, without doubt, need for a proper system to be put in place where noses are not allowed to be in the trough in such a way that, in my opinion, is unacceptable.

The leader of DCC maintains that just as non-executive directors in large commercial ventures get large payments for their occasional one or two-day jobs in the city of London in addition to their normal occupational salary, a similar practice should be allowed in local government in respect of multiple allowances.

I disagree and I would not be surprised if others are of similar mind.