When Folkestone & Hythe District Council set its 2024/25 budget, councillor allowances were quietly pulled into the political bargaining. Now, in the 2026/27 budget papers heading to scrutiny, allowances reappear—not as a simple inflation uplift, but as a larger “budget realignment” driven by internal assumptions that didn’t come true.
That matters for residents for a straightforward reason: allowances are part of the council’s core running costs. They compete—directly or indirectly—with everything else the council says it can’t afford. So if the allowances budget is being “reset” upwards because last year’s budgeting assumptions were unrealistic, that’s exactly the sort of thing scrutiny is supposed to catch early.
The last time allowances were “cut”: 28 February 2024
In the Full Council meeting that approved the budget, councillors amended the proposed allowance increase. The minutes record that Council agreed to “reduce member allowances increment from 6.7% to 5% on the basic allowance and to freeze all SRAs for 2024/25 at 2023/24 payment levels.”
That’s the clearest, date-stamped moment on the council’s own public record where allowances were deliberately held below the index that would otherwise have applied.
And it wasn’t the only downward movement. The budget papers at the time also recorded a “voluntary reduction in Special Responsibility Allowance from Leader (£13,740) and Deputy Leader (£1,145) totalling £14,900” (tied to wider budget amendments).
Layman’s translation: in 2024, the council chose to damp down allowances compared with what would have happened if it simply followed inflation.
Are allowances now rising “in line with inflation”?
Mostly yes on the headline rates—but the bigger cost increase in the 2026/27 papers is not mainly inflation.
Here’s what the public documents show.
Basic allowance (paid to every councillor)
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2023/24: £5,727 (standard full-year figure in the published payments list).
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2024/25:£6,014.04 (published payments list).
That’s a 5% increase—matching the cap Council voted for (and below CPI at the time). -
2025/26: FHDC’s constitution shows the scheme basic allowance at £6,117 from 1 April 2025.
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2026/27 (budget assumption): the budget papers explicitly refer to a 3.8% CPI uplift being applied for allowances budgeting.
CPI check (Office for National Statistics)
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September 2023 CPI inflation: 6.7% (the figure Council chose not to fully apply in 2024/25).
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September 2024 CPI inflation: 1.7% (consistent with moving from ~£6,014 to ~£6,117).
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September 2025 CPI inflation: 3.8% (the figure now being used in the 2026/27 budget assumptions).
Bottom line:
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The 2024/25 uplift was below inflation (5% vs CPI 6.7%).
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The 2026/27 uplift assumption (3.8%) is in line with CPI.
So if the question is “are councillors giving themselves an above-inflation rise this time?”, the answer—on the CPI-uplift component—is no.
But that’s not the whole story.
The part residents won’t see in the headline: the 2026/27 “realignment”
In the 2026/27 budget growth bids, FHDC isn’t just assuming a CPI uplift. It is also proposing to increase the allowances budget because last year’s budgeting assumption no longer holds.
One growth bid states that the council will “realign members allowances budget to allow for full entitlement to SRA allowances (Councillor allowances)… [including] 3.8% CPI increase,” and notes that the budget was previously reduced in anticipation of a governance change (a move to a committee system) “which did not happen.”
That is a polite, bureaucratic way of saying: the budget line was artificially suppressed on the assumption the council would restructure itself—and now it’s being put back.
And in cash terms, the papers show proposed 2026/27 growth items connected to allowances of:
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£128,130 (SRA budget “realignment” plus CPI)
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£20,200 (estimated employer National Insurance increase on councillor allowances)
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£1,000 (basic allowance budget alignment)
That is not “inflation”. That’s a budgeting correction—and corrections deserve scrutiny because they often reveal what was unrealistic or politically convenient in the previous year’s numbers.
The rules on councillor allowances (briefly, and why they matter)
Councillor allowances are governed by the Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003.
Key protections for the public include:
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An allowances scheme is mandatory and must set out what is payable.
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Before making or changing a scheme, the council must “have regard” to recommendations from an Independent Remuneration Panel (IRP).
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Councils must publish the scheme and publish totals paid to each councillor after year-end.
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Councillors can choose to forgo all or part of their entitlement (it’s explicitly provided for).
FHDC’s own constitution also sets out its local scheme framework, including the current figures and structure (basic allowance plus SRAs for specific roles).
Why residents should care: the legal structure is meant to prevent councillors quietly marking their own homework—by forcing transparency and external recommendations. If the budgeting for allowances is being “reset” because last year’s assumptions didn’t happen, that’s a governance/financial-control issue, not just a “pay rise” story.
A hard question for scrutiny: is the council budgeting responsibly—or defensively?
The 2024/25 decision to cap the rise and freeze SRAs was an explicit political choice.
The 2026/27 papers now propose budgeting for “full entitlement” and reversing a reduction made on the assumption of a governance change that “did not happen.”
That invites one central scrutiny question:
Was last year’s allowances budget reduced because the council genuinely expected structural change—or because it helped make the numbers look better at budget-setting time?
Residents don’t need to take a view on the merits of allowances to ask that. It’s a basic test of financial discipline: are budgets being set on realistic assumptions, or on hoped-for organisational changes that are not actually delivered?
If you have a story we should be looking at, then please do contact us at: TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me – Always Discreet, Always Confidential
The Shepway Vox Team
Dissent is NOT a Crime
