After a lengthy campaign, which included Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, independent Wiltshire Councillor Terry Chivers has persuaded the Council to publish the table of councillors’ allowances and expenses for 2013-2014.
The full table can now be found on the Wiltshire Council website. Electors can now see what the Marlborough area’s four unitary councillors received as allowances and expenses.
The period covered straddles the unitary elections in May 2013. This means that some councillors who did not stand again or were defeated, appear with very small allowances and expenses against their names.
During Councillor Chivers’ campaign he was told by the Information Commissioner’s office that these figures “should have been online by law some weeks ago.”
When Councillor Chivers asked for a review of the Council’s decision to deny his FOI request, he also learned more about the Council’s Freedom of Information processes.
The Council wrote to him: “There is no legal timescale for a review to be completed under the Freedom of Information Act. The ICO recommend 20 days and we generally comply with that, we have however, for our published procedure, adopted the 40 working days required under the similar legislation that does actually specify a timescale (Environmental Information Regulations 2004.)”
Councillor Chivers, who was elected for Melksham Without North, is one of eleven of Wiltshire’s 98 councillors now listed as Independents. At the election in May 2013 seven councillors were elected as Independent – with one listed as ‘Other’.
