In December 2021, MLA Deirdre Hargey was the Minister for the Department for Communities. She agreed to a further independently led review of the roles and responsibilities of councillors following issues raised about the changing and more challenging roles faced by councillors because of the impact of wider political instability, local impact of external events, the role of social media and the advent of new initiatives such as City Deals. It should be noted that councillor allowances are funded by councils.
Maynard Mawhinney was appointed on 1 December 2023 for 6 months as the Independent Chair of the working group which will review the roles and responsibilities of councillors in Northern Ireland over a period of 6 months. The Chair and working group will make recommendations to the Department on the system and level of a range of allowances available to councillors.
The other members of the working group appointed to take forward the review are as follows:
The review will make recommendations on the system and level of allowances which would be available to councillors taking into consideration the role and responsibilities of councillors since April 2015 and schemes of remuneration for councillors in other jurisdictions in Britain and Ireland. This will include:
It is important for the review to hear from as wide a range of interested parties as possible. This will enable the review to produce evidence-based recommendations to the Department for Communities.
You are invited to complete the short online survey below. This should take no more than 10 minutes. This call for evidence will run for 6 weeks until 18:00 on Friday 15th March 2024. To complete the survey please click here.
We do not require any personal data, such as your name or address. Please see this link to the privacy notice for this survey. If you have any further questions about how we will use the information collected in this survey, please email office@nilga.org.