THE money that will go into the pockets of top Tory councillors could pay for dozens of essential lower paid staff, according to Trade Unions.

Around £175,000 is set to be reallocated from the earnings of some councillors to the ten cabinet members, including the council leader.

The Conservative group have continually claimed the allowances budget will not increase, but cabinet members may double their allowances to as much as £34,780 while council leader Lynne Hillan could collect up to a total of about £64,000.

But representatives from Barnet Trades Council believe the money could be used to stop the planned job cuts and negate the concerns of staff around the potential privatisation of services.

According to UNION and the NUT, a level 1 teaching assistant earns £16,290 if they are working for 36 hours per week, although they usually only work 20 hours per week, which amounts to salaries of about £9,000 a year.

And the GMB said at least half of the street cleaning staff are on salaries of £12, 787.

Austin Harney, secretary of Barnet TUC, said the investment should be in staff working in the public sector.

He said: “As a TUC we are reacting very much with anger to these increases.

“The Tory group are trying to privatise services, but service delivery is not improving. If they are going to start cutting staff it is only going to get worse.”

A document has also been written up by former Barnet Councillor Dan Hope in reaction to the allowance rise.

The Barnet Declaration urges a strong reaction from residents and lists five main points considered the crux of the outrage.

It states the rise is unacceptable, there was no publicity for the proposal, whipping the policy was wrong, support should be given to opposition campaigns, and the move must be reversed.

Mr Hope said: “It struck me that the opposition needed to be formalised in a way that everybody could agree with.

“We needed to focus the anger and feeling of discontentment so the council can understand it is not partisan, it is a reaction of the wider public and they want something done.

“The fragmented nature of the efforts to reverse the move mean the issue could filter out.”