Each year, the Local Government Remuneration Tribunal may determine the annual fee payable to a mayor and councillor under section 241 of the Local Government Act 1993 (the Act). The fee is scaled according to the category a council falls within and the category can be determined at least once every three years under section 239 of the Act. This report presents the results of a recent reclassification of Willoughby Council and seeks to amend the fees paid to Councillors accordingly.

 In the 2018 and 2019, the Tribunal’s Annual Report and Determination, Willoughby City Council was categorised as a “Metropolitan Small” and had sought to be re-categorised to “Metropolitan Medium” due to the scale of operations, businesses, regional significance of its centres and high percentage of non-resident visitors workers and resident population.

In January 2020, Willoughby City Council again sought to be re-categorised as “Metropolitan Medium” with a focus on non-resident workers to be included in the population. The submission resulted with the Tribunal reviewing non-resident working populations across all metropolitan councils. The Tribunal came to the conclusion that there was a strong case to recognise the impact on councils of serving significant numbers of non-resident workers. The criteria now provides councils with a non-resident working population of 50,000 or above to move to another category if their combined resident and non-resident working population exceeds the minimum population threshold. The criteria for Metropolitan Medium has been amended as follows:

Metropolitan Medium: Councils may also be categorised as Metropolitan Medium if their residential population combined with their non-resident working population exceeds 100,000. To satisfy this criteria the non-resident working population must exceed 50,000.

 As a result, in the June 2020 Tribunal’s Annual Report and Determination, Willoughby City Council was categorised as a “Metropolitan Medium”.

The fees set for the 2020/2021 period will be set as per the revised “Metropolitan Medium” category rather than the general 2.5% increase consistent with the Government’s policy on wages and is set out in the below table:

A consideration  is given that Willoughby Council now only meets 10 times a re year, should they be expecting the maximum pay compared to  past years where Councillors were required to put in a lot more time and effort and particularly astherest of the community receives either nil or a maximum of 2.5% increase ?

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