Elected members do not receive a salary, they receive an annual allowance to assist them in performing their duties. We have a member of the administration who said recently in an email, "I don't work for the public, I work for the council". I would beg to differ.

Meetings do not take up elected members time that much, certainly not 9-5 Mon to Fri. Full Council meets about 4/5 times a year, committees usually meet about 3/4 times a year and all take no longer than one hour. Many elected members have full time day jobs, and dependent on their employers, are entitled to one days paid leave a week to undertake council business.

This begs the question, are elected members 'public servants' I am aware many do not agree and many dislike the word 'servant'. At the last full council meeting Provost Fletcher said they were there to make decisions for the public, I would like to think that those decisions are based on what the public want, not what they think we should want.

I understand that concerns have been raised with the Data Protection Commissioners Office that at the time of the consultation and still today the council website continues to allegedly not comply with four specific sections of The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), The Data Protection Act (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

It must be born in mind that at this moment in time these are unproven allegations and it is unknown whether the commissioners office will consider investigating the allegations.