Councillors in Swindon will not be getting a pay rise next year.

Neither will the leader, or members of the cabinet or those councillors who chair committees – except for the deputy leader, Russell Holland, whose special responsibility allowance will be increased slightly.

Those are the views of a special panel of non-councillors set up to look at who much elected members should be ‘paid’ for their work.

It means that for the majority of the 57-member authority there will have been no increase in allowance for three years, since an increase in 2017/18, apart from index-linked raises matching the national increases in council officers’ pay.

The panel, chaired by businessman Keith Strickland, said it believed that Swindon’s allowances were reasonable – and reasonably generous – when compared to similar authorities. It said allowances should be unchanged “given the work to establish the reasonableness of the Basic Allowance and the council’s position in relation to the ‘family group’ authorities and the potential workload reduction for councillors arising from the devolution of council services to the parish and town councils across Swindon.”

It means every councillor will be paid £8,552 for the next year. Leader David Renard will get that plus a special responsibility allowance of three times that – bringing his allowance to £34,208, significantly less than the leader of Wiltshire Council.

Members of the cabinet will receive £21,380 except the Coun Holland, who will get £24,373.

The panel said: “This is to better reflect the duties and responsibilities of the role and to increase the separation between this role and that of a cabinet member. “

It added that it brought the allowance closer to the average for similar councils.

As leader and deputy leader Couns Renard and Holland are responsible for an authority with a budget of £140 million annually, which employs about 2,600 people.

The only allowance the panel wanted to increase was that for paying for care for dependent relatives to allow attendance for meetings. It wants it increased from £7.20 per hour to the actual fee charged by carers to a maximum of £20 per hour:“to encourage more candidates with caring responsibilities to stand as councillors.”

If the Conservative cabinet approves the report it will be put to the vote at the next full council. The increase in total allowance budget would be £855 in 2019/20 at £708,961 for the year.