A DECISION by councillors on whether to award themselves pay rises of up to 300 per cent has been delayed until the summer.

The Guardian broke the news in November that members were considering rises in special responsibility allowances (SRAs) that would take pay for some of them to nearly £50,000 a year.

The proposals come from a committee of London Councils, the group which represents boroughs across the capital, and could see councillors' pay for chairing committees rise from £8,000 to £26,000.

The allowance for council leader Alan Weinberg would jump from £33,800 to £51,000, giving him a take-home pay of £61,155.

Councillors have yet to vote on the proposals but at a full council meeting a recommendation to cut the proportion of councillors eligible for SRAs from 68 per cent to 54 per cent was sent back to the council's scrutiny committee for reconsideration.

Cllrs Robert Cole and Sue Nolan said they tabled the amendment because they felt a scrutiny committee's original report into the issue was not thorough enough.

Cllr Cole said: "Considering all the fuss about MPs, we should be as open and transparent as possible. We are trying to make as full a review as possible."

Leader Cllr Weinberg agreed, and called on his fellow councillors to "move forward instead of continuing looking backwards".

But opposition councillors were outraged.

Cllr Ken Turner said: "I am quite flabbergasted that at this stage an attempt is being made to torpedo this proposal."

Cllr Harold Moth said: "I believe the scrutiny committee did a very good job and there are some people here that want to delay this for their own personal reasons."

All councillors in Redbridge currently receive a basic allowance of £9,895 and this is due to remain largely the same, but London Councils wants councils across the capital to increase the pay of councillors who serve on committees. Their recommendations would cost taxpayers at least an extra £250,000 in Redbridge alone.

The council's ten-member cabinet, the largest legally allowed, stands to gain some of the biggest rises with their allowances going from £16,633 to somewhere between £42,669 and £48,765.

The number of cabinet posts will now be considered by the scrutiny committee along with the amounts being payed at other councils.