Can a Councillor work for the same Council they are elected to, indirectly?

Question

If you are a Councillor for x Council, I gather that you cannot work for them directly. But can you indirectly in some way?

Reason why I ask, there is some dept that are not customer facing eg IT and I find it strange if a Councillor has the right skillsets in those areas, then I think they should be able to be considered for the role. Alternately, Councils create sub companies alot of the time to manage projects etc and I was hence wondering if councillors then get employed by them if they have the right skillsets again.
It came up in conversation and keen to get a answer in some form.

Answer 1

Employees cannot be councillors, but ... Councillors can be unpaid employees.

• Employees cannot be councillors: Local Government Act 1972  Section 80 (1) this includes sub-companies
• Councillors can be employees: Local Government Act 1972 Section 112 (5)

 

But a councillor being appointed to an unpaid office of the council cannot be appointed to a paid appointment of the council for 1 year after he ceases to be a councillor.

 

So in your example: a council IT technician has to quit his job with the council so that he can be elected. He can be appointed (willingly) to be the Council's unpaid IT Technician. However, to take up paid employed as the IT Technician, he must not have been a councillor for 12 months. - This is to prevent the case of: 'You do the job for free, as soon your term of office is up, we'll create a paid post comes up, and slot you straight in'.

 

Hope that helps