Councillors in charge of committees at a cash-strapped authority will continue to be paid... even though most of the meetings have been scrapped due to coronavirus.

All members at Canterbury City Council are paid a basic annual sum of about £5,000, but those in charge of committees are also given special responsibility allowances.

However, a host of meetings have been wiped from the calendar as a result of the pandemic.

Labour councillor Mel Dawkins therefore proposed at last night's Covid-19 emergency committee to freeze additional payments from June 1 for those members earning money for meetings not being hosted.

She suggested re-allocating the cash into the council's budget would help with the authority's current financial woes.

Those woes have reached unprecedented levels, with coronavirus leaving a whopping £12 million black hole in council coffers - a blow described by chief executive Colin Carmichael as a financial emergency on a scale “simply never seen before”.

The huge budget gap has mainly been put down to a loss of parking revenue income - which officers fear could total £4.8 million this year - as well as lost property rents and the additional costs of paying to house rough sleepers at the city’s Travelodge.

Although the government has provided £1.7 million of funding to deal with the pressures, the council says it is not enough to close the gap.

Members therefore agreed last night to reach deep into the council's “rainy day” reserves and pull out £7.5 million to help combat the crisis.

But money allocated to chairmen of cancelled committee meetings, of which almost all have been postponed aside from planning and licensing, will not be put into the reserves pot.

That cash will instead continue to be paid to councillors - a move which Labour councillor Dave Wilson perceives as "morally" wrong.

He said: "This is very straightforward. Committees are not meeting, therefore committee chairs should not be getting paid for doing no work.

"I really think people should think about the moral issue here and how it looks to residents."

His thoughts were echoed by veteran Lib Dem Cllr Nick Eden-Green who said: "These committees simply aren't sitting at the moment, so it is absolutely extraordinary that we should even consider carrying on paying people for a job they aren't dong.

"For chairs to be paid an extra sum of money over and above the councillor allowance is quite outrageous.

"Councillors are quite frankly taking money for jobs they are simply not doing at the moment."

The motion, however, faced stiff opposition from Tory councillors who wanted to keep the special allowances intact.

'Committees are not meeting, therefore committee chairs should not be getting paid for doing no work...'

Chairman of the policy and resources committee Cllr Rachel Carnac (Con) said that although they may not be having public meetings, she was still doing work behind the scenes.

"I have meetings tomorrow - I have them all the time," she said.

"It's not a matter that I just turn up and chair a meetings, so I am very disappointed members of the opposition really don't appreciate the work of the chairmen of all committees."

Cllr Ian Stockley (Con) also conveyed his disappointment at the motion and stressed all committee chairmen are "earning every penny".

Cllr Ashley Clark (Con) said: "It's naive to think you just turn up at a meeting and chair it. You don't, there's much more to it. It's naive in the extreme.

"There is a huge amount of work that goes on."

Seven councillors voted for the proposal to temporarily scrap special responsibility allowances, while 10 voted against.

Meanwhile, expensive projects such as the £12 million council offices move, the £630,000 refurbishment of St George’s Street, and the £3.6 million expansion of Wincheap park and ride have all been put on hold for a year.

Deferring the large capital projects is expected to save the council about £1.1 million.

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