Councillors from West Somerset serving on the area’s new local authority will see an increase of more than £2,000 on current annual allowance.

West Somerset Council gives councillors a basic allowance of £2,733 to compensate them for their time working on council matters.

But the basic allowance on the new Somerset West and Taunton Council when it takes over next year has been set at £4,950 – an increase of £2,217 a year.

Taunton Deane Borough Council already pays £4,344, so the increase is only just over £600.

The allowance, which will go to all councillors elected to the new council in May, was agreed at a meeting of the shadow council last week and will go up annually in line with inflation for the next four years.

Members heard that West Somerset’s current allowance was very near the bottom of the scale for similar councils and had not gone up since 2011.

Taunton Deane’s was much nearer to the average for similar councils but had not increased since 2014.

The level of the new council allowance was put forward by the Joint Independent Remuneration Panel, which also sets the allowance levels for Somerset County Council and Mendip District Council.

One of factors affecting its recommendation was that there would be fewer councillors, each representing a bigger electorate and therefore facing a higher workload.

As well as the basic allowance, special responsibility allowances are given to councillors who take on such roles as council leader, cabinet member and committee chairman. The rates for these will not be fixed until March.