Was anyone else shocked that the Returning Officer fee for Sheffield was £20,000?

[ClaireDeLoon]

linky

It seems an awful lot to me! Does anyone know how much work is involved in taking on such a role? He is already chief exectutive of the City Council so I would imagine it can't be a full time job for the period of the election campaign otherwise how would he fulfil his normal full time role?

Also, how do you apply

All the people administering the election get paid. Poll clerks, presiding officers etc. The returning officer has the responsibility of coordinating all the staff, training, electoral registers, ballot papers, legal requirements. Quite 'full on' I should imagine, even if it is only for a few weeks.

I got £90 for counting .

£90 for counting isn't bad - how many hours did you do?

You get the same amount regardless of whether you are there for 2 hours or 6 hrs . Had to report by 9.45pm , left at 4am .

Wonder if there's a "set fee" of say 5,000 and there may have been results from a few constituencies.

It is perhaps a reflection on him/her taking responsibility for the process at polling stations and overseeing the counting, but still seems a lot (and I bet the rest of the people get peeved about the amount they receive for the day / night when they know he gets such a generous fee.

I suspect most are Chief Execs on 100K to 200K a year (these days) but don't know if they are 'expected' to do this as well (or whether they could decide not to do it).

Even if they have to run 2 or 3 days with different groups of staff to go over the regulations in advance of the poll, they seem to be paid a lot for the time they probably put in (eg 1,250 per day, 625/day if they put in 8 'days' including 'overtime' rates).

Or maybe it's x pence per person on the electoral roll so variable across the UK.

CU - perhaps you can say whether you had much more than a factsheet and some sort of briefing (well) before the count was taken ? Or did they spend a half day stressing different aspects ?

Would the fee paid to you have gone up if you had exceeded 6 hours (imagine 3 or 4 recounts if the 'gap' was under 50 votes) ?

PS Thanks for giving an insight to the rest of us.

This link www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-05302.pdf sets out their responsibilities. "The fees payable to each Returning Officer for each constituency counting area is set out, and these range between £2,500 and £4,000."

It's a lot more than a few day's work and, if they seriously mess up they can be fined £5,000.

It was a set fee regardless of who long you worked .

When sent the form giving you details of where to go etc we were given briefing notes that we had to read before we attended.

No briefing as such given on the night.

Alot of poeple have done it before - it is quite straight forward.

Chil - well, Sheffield Hallam fucked up, as did quite a few other places. Wonder whether any of the returning officers will be fined? Indeed, whether any of them have ever been fined?

They have to seriously breach their official duties 'without reasonable cause' to be fined. I'm sure that it's being investigated. However, the presiding officers - those responsible for the running of individual polling stations - would appear to be in the front-line for the most critiscism. Their bad judgement on the day let the side down.