Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will take steps to establish an independent body to monitor the salaries of council staff.

Ministers have taken a number of steps to increase the transparency and accountability of local decisions on the pay and reward of council staff. This action has helped ensure that local people have the information they need to hold councils to account.

Local elected members need to make sure that decisions about the remuneration of senior staff are clearly in the interest of local taxpayers, and that they operate to the same standards of restraint as the rest of the public sector.