LABOUR’S Pete Lowe has hit back over claims made by UKIP that annual pay for Dudley Council’s leader rose by 15 per cent over two years.

Citing figures published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Councillor Paul Brothwood - Dudley’s UKIP leader – spoke of his shock at the annual allowance handed out to the borough’s leader which appeared to have risen by 15 per cent from £20,900 in 2012/13 to £23,999 in 2014/15.

Lye Labour Councillor Pete Lowe, Dudley Council’s current leader, however, has now disputed the figures – saying the leader (at that time Councillor David Sparks) received £23,250 in 2012/13 and that figure, he says, remained constant from 2010/11 to 2012/13 – rising only by one per cent in 2013/14 to £23,482 and 2.2 per cent in 2014/15 taking the leader’s special responsibility’s allowance up to £23,999 – a level which it has remained at since.

He said: “Yet again the facts show UKIP have deliberately misled the good people of Dudley. Rather than the leader’s allowance going up by 15 per cent over three years the facts demonstrate they only went up by 3.2 per cent over seven years and by nothing since I assumed the leadership, totally consistent with my statement that it has gone up in line with the public sector workers who work for us.”

Cllr Lowe said the £20,900 figure highlighted by UKIP, which was obtained from data published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, was the amount pocketed by Councillor David Sparks as leader during his first 11 months in the job – not the full annual special responsibility allowance for 2012/13, which he claims was £23,250.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance, however, has said its research into the annual allowances of councillors and local authority leaders was based on figures supplied by Dudley Council through a Freedom of Information request.

Jennifer Salisbury Jones, from the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "I asked the council for 'the leader of the council's special responsibility allowance' for 2012-13. I was reliant on them to provide an accurate number for this."

Meanwhile - while trying to make sense of all these figures - the News has discovered a public notice published on the council’s website for 2009 which shows the special responsibility for Dudley’s leader at that time was £19,080 – which would mean the annual pay packet of the borough’s leader has in fact risen by 26 per cent over seven years!

Councillor Paul Brothwood, who was quick to speak out in the News over what originally appeared to have been a hefty increase in pay to the leader, said of the latest discovery: “It looks like it wasn’t a 15 per cent rise over two years – it was a 26 per cent rise over seven years.

"A one per cent rise would be too much with what’s happened in Dudley’s children’s services. The leader should take a pay cut – a 100 per cent pay cut and resign.”

Cllr Lowe said any rises to the leader's allowance prior to 2012 would have been approved under the previous Conservative administration and he added: “Since Labour took office in 2012 pay has only gone up in line with public sector workers.

"It’s only gone up by 3.2 per cent since we took control - and since I became leader my allowance has increased by nil, nowt, zero, nothing. The 2.2 per cent rise took place prior to my leadership in December 2014."

Cllr Brothwood, however, said: "Austerity started in the wake of the financial crash and that's why UKIP has and will continue to reject any rises. I wish the others would follow us."