ALLOWANCES for councillors should be overhauled to attract more people into politics, the leader of Oxford City Council has said.

Bob Price said other methods for paying public servants should be reconsidered in the wake of a string of outcries about allowances in the past year.

Last month councillors of South Oxfordshire District Council voted through an increase to their basic allowances of 58 per cent, to £4,575 a year.

And in December Oxfordshire County Council agreed an annual allowance of £10,000, a 19 per cent hike.

Both local authorities were criticised for making the increases at a time of huge spending cuts.

Mr Price said compensation schemes for employers should be considered, or a national standard for councillor allowances.

He added: “It is a complicated area, because it is impossible to offer less than a living wage and attract people to the job.

“What would be far more effective would be allowing people who have jobs to take reasonable amounts of time off for council business and compensate employers for it.

“That would allow anyone, at any level of salary, to become a councillor but also work.”

A total of £328,000 was spent on councillor allowances by Oxford City Council in the last financial year, according to figures released last month.

For the current financial year councillors have received a larger basic allowance, as recommended by an independent remuneration panel in November last year.

The panel proposed an increase of the basic allowance of £4,713.96, to £4,809. Those with special responsibilities, such as the leader, executive board members, or committee chairman, also receive extra allowances.

Mr Price is paid the basic allowance, as well as £7,213 for his executive board portfolio of corporate strategy and economic development and £14,427 for his role as leader.

He said that his former employer Oxford Brookes University, where he was human resources director until retiring in 2014, had given him time to fulfil civic duties.

University spokesman Matthew Butler said: “The university is committed to equality of opportunity in employment for all its staff and to developing work practices and human resource policies that support work-life balance.”

Paid leave of up to 12 days can be taken in a year for public duties and may be taken as whole or half days.

St Clements city councillor Bev Clack, a professor of religious philosophy at the university, said she supported the policy and believed people from a wider range of backgrounds should become involved in politics.

Prof Clack added: “You have to really think about the kinds of people you want in political life, because at the moment there is a danger of not attracting people who don’t have the same flexibility as me, or who have employers that are not as understanding.”

In 2012 a report by the government’s Communities and Local Government Committee said: “The levels of allowances currently offered by many councils, at best, do not encourage and, at worst, deter capable people from standing for election.”