ALLOWANCES for councillors in the Wycombe district went down compared to last year, new figures show.

Wycombe District Council was one of just 36 local authorities in the whole of the United Kingdom where the annual amount councillors were allowed to claim went down.

Figures from the Taxpayers' Alliance released this week showed councillors' basic allowance for the 2011-12 financial year was £4,350 - a 3.6 per cent drop from the £4,514.52 they were entitled to last year.

The figure was around the average a district councillor can expect to be allowed to claim. The statistics showed Bolsover in Derbyshire gave their councillors the biggest allowance - £9,902 - while those at South Ribble in Lancashire were entitled to the lowest, a measly £1,500.

Allowances at Chiltern and South Bucks District Councils stayed the same, where councillors were entitled to £4,500 and £4,100 respectively.

They also remained the same at Buckinghamshire County Council, with the authority towards the top end compared to other counties around Britain.

There councillors were entitled to an annual claim of £10,718, compared to the £12,906 available to the highest paying county council, Nottinghamshire. The lowest paid was Northamptonshire, where councillors' allowances were £7,086.