Councillors have voted to give themselves a pay rise.

The basic allowance paid to a Maidstone Borough Councillor will go up by just over 2% to £5,749pa from October 1.

The council leader, David Burton, his cabinet members, and various chairmen of council committees additionally get a “special responsibility allowance” – and those are also going up by just over 2%.

It will take the leader’s special allowance to £23,036pa.

The increases were all recommended by the council’s Independent Remuneration Panel, which comprises one resident, one representative of the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce and one director from employment consultants South East Employers.

The one recommendation made by the panel that was not adopted was that a special responsibilities allowance of £6,911 be paid to the leader of the opposition, currently Lib Dem group leader Clive English.

The council administration argued that the leader of the opposition had no specific responsibilities under the council’s constitution.

However, opposition group leaders will all get a payment of an additional £2,303 if their group numbers at least six members.

That would currently include Cllr English, and Cllr Fay Gooch as leader of the Independents, plus Cllr Stuart Jeffery as leader of the Green Independent Alliance, but it would rule out the Labour Party with four members and the Fant and Oakwood Independents with two.

Four councillors will see their extra cash fall.

The panel said it was now of the view that when it last reviewed allowances at the point where the council was switching over from a committee system to a cabinet system, it had originally set the allowances for the chairman of the policy advisory committees too high.

Consequently, the panel recommended these be reduced from £5,635 to £3,455pa – a drop of 39%.

Recommending the changes to the council, Cllr David Burton said: “There will be no net effect on council finances as there is virtually no change. We will not be applying a full inflationary increase.”

Inflation was officially measured at 5.9% in August.

The changes were passed ‘on the nod.’

Three councillors – Stanley Forecast, Tom Cannon and Ziggy Trzebinski – raised their hands to speak, but the Mayor, Cllr Gordon Newton, who was chairing the meeting, did not give them a chance to do so, going straight to the vote without asking if anyone wanted to debate the issue.