Question

Is there any guidance about what %age of the Precept is acceptable and can be used for a Clerk/RFO salary review ??

Answer 1

The clerk's salary is based on the size of the parish council, the facilities, number of committee and number of staff that are employed.  There is no guidance as to how much of the precept is allocated to the clerk's salary.

Comments

This is of course one of the matters that need to be considered when setting budgets. As with all costs councillors need to keep the question in the back of their minds of "is it value for money?" and be justified as such. Unfortunately in times of shortages of good quality labour economic forces come into play and the only way that councils can fill their vacancies it to pay over the odds for a good Clerk. ( who by inference will earn their money)

Answer 2

I note the other answer, but overall the answer is no.  It depends on what the council does.  A council with a precept of £5000 may spend 80% plus of its income on the clerk, and one with £200,000 a much lower % but a higher cost clerk working longer hours.  Overall, its up to the council to determine pay and hours of work, and the more they drop on the clerk (or the more that try and do) the more it costs.   I spent a few years answering various complaints from the public ( as a councillor).  If we had left it to the clerk, we would have spent 130% of the precept on letters to irate members of the public complaining about things that were nothing to do with the council.

Comments

If 80% of the precept goes on the Clerks salary plus of course there’s admin costs on top the residents don’t seem to be getting value for money
My local city has a population of 358,000 a single tier of local government and 54 councillors
My Parish of 12,000 has 20 parish councillors, 4 borough councillors and one county councillor
The parish has a huge wages bill and the three tiers of local government ignore each other
The amount of money that must be wasted with the current flawed system must be astronomical

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Yep, it looks like that, but the councillors were all long in the tooth locals who did all the donkey work, leaving the clerk to do the admin and so on to keep the precept low..  Similar villages had precepts 3 - 5 times greater as they expected all the donkey work (cutting grass, fixing gates, chopping trees replying to complaints, walking the talk) to be done by paid staff.  I guess once a village expands and new developments appear the precept needs to rise exponentially as the old guard leave and new ones arrive.  But in this case the council died as its councillors died (or moved elsewhere) and it no longer exists.