Plea over allowances confusion

There's still a lot of debate about the issue of councillors' allowances, and a complex question posed by one of our readers.
He tells us:- "There is a further issue which you may care to take forward in the wider interests of democracy, concerning the supposition that community cohesion is based on a system of laws and rules which society changes from time to time in accordance with its needs.
"If you care to examine the recommendations of central government and the formulae which are available to calculate councillors' allowances, whatever the arguments for or against a Boston increase at the present time, I believe it to be a matter for huge concern that an influential committee can sit in secret session, throw the rule book out of the window, ignore official guidelines and finally arrive at a decision which cannot be confirmed using published data.
"The glaring example which comes to mind is the panel's notional 25% deduction to take account of Boston being a 'low pay' area , which is applied on top of the 33.3% further deduction for what it quaintly calls a public service discount.
"Two questions arise from this. Why does the national average wage difference based on Boston versus national advertised vacancies peak at minus 9%? And are these calculations applied to all Boston Borough Council wages and allowances ?
"The questions are, of course, rhetorical!"
Whilst we like a challenge, we could find nothing clear and simple by way of government recommendations and formulae to calculate allowances, so if any other of our readers can help shed light on the matter we would be please to hear from them.

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