The Mayor of the East Midlands Combined County Authority is set to receive a pay rise under proposals due to be considered by the authority’s board later this month, alongside the introduction of a wider new allowances framework linked to forthcoming national devolution legislation.
A report to the board of the East Midlands Combined County Authority on 26 January recommends approval of changes put forward by an Independent Remuneration Panel, which was established last summer to review the allowances paid to members of the newly formed authority.
If approved, the Mayor’s allowance would rise from £95,976 to £99,500. The panel also recommends an increase to the Deputy Mayor’s allowance, setting it at £24,875, replacing the previous range of payments that reflected different deputy arrangements during the authority’s first year.
The review follows the creation of the Combined County Authority in 2024, bringing together Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Nottingham under a single strategic body with powers over transport, skills, housing and economic growth. The authority held its first mayoral election in May 2024, with Labour’s Claire Ward elected as the region’s inaugural mayor.
Under the East Midlands Combined County Authority Regulations 2024, members of the authority are generally prohibited from receiving remuneration beyond travel and subsistence, unless an Independent Remuneration Panel recommends specific allowances. This reflects long-standing national rules designed to prevent “double remuneration”, particularly where council leaders sit on combined authority boards while already receiving allowances from their home councils.
As a result, allowances have until now been limited largely to the mayor, deputy mayor, independent committee members and regulatory committee roles such as audit and scrutiny. The panel’s work, approved in principle by the board in June 2025, was tasked with reviewing those existing payments and assessing whether they remained appropriate after the authority’s first year of operation.
The panel met over three days in Chesterfield last autumn and carried out interviews with senior figures, alongside benchmarking against comparable mayoral combined authorities elsewhere in England. Its report concludes that modest increases are justified across permitted roles, citing the scale of responsibilities, time commitments and the complexity of governance arrangements.
In addition to changes to mayoral pay, the panel recommends higher allowances for members of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Audit and Governance Committee, as well as the introduction of new payments for vice-chairs of both committees and for substitute scrutiny members when called upon. The allowance for the chair of each regulatory committee would rise slightly to £9,950, while ordinary committee members would see their allowance more than double to £2,450.
All allowances would be index-linked annually to national local government pay awards, aligning elected members’ remuneration with the National Joint Council settlement applied to council staff.
More significantly, the report looks ahead to proposed national changes contained in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which is currently progressing through Parliament. The Bill would, for the first time, allow combined authorities to pay allowances to constituent council leaders and other members where they hold “special responsibilities” beyond simply sitting on the board.
The panel argues that this would address a long-standing imbalance, where constituent councils effectively subsidise the additional workload of combined authority roles through their own allowance schemes. Subject to the Bill receiving Royal Assent and accompanying statutory guidance, the panel recommends new special responsibility allowances from June 2026 for roles such as portfolio leads, committee chairs and vice-chairs.
Indicative figures set out in the report include £9,950 for a constituent board member with special responsibilities, £4,975 for a thematic committee chair and smaller payments for deputy and vice-chair roles. Only one such allowance would be payable per member, even if multiple qualifying roles are held.
However, the report stresses that these figures are provisional and may be revised once final government guidance is issued, particularly where members already receive allowances from their home authorities for similar responsibilities. The board is also explicitly prevented from approving allowances higher than those recommended by the panel.
The panel notes that further change is likely in the medium term, with local government reorganisation across the East Midlands due to be implemented by April 2028. This could alter the composition of the combined authority and, in turn, the way allowances are structured. For that reason, it recommends that the scheme be revisited once the implications of reorganisation and further devolution become clearer.
The financial impact of the immediate allowance changes is set out in the report as an additional £29,000 per year, taking the total annual cost of existing allowances to around £219,000. The potential future allowances linked to the devolution Bill would add an estimated £114,000 annually, subject to legislation and guidance. These costs would be built into the authority’s 2026/27 budget and medium-term financial plan.