Six months ago, Paul White was diagnosed with heart failure. He was 32 and had been the leader of Pendle council, in east Lancashire, for just a few months. The stress of the position, he now believes, was making him dangerously ill.

Since taking over the top job last May, drawing the princely allowance of £6,500 for the 30-hours-a-week job, White has called the police four times because of threatening messages he received from constituents.

Things got so bad that he asked the council’s chief executive to end the tradition of printing councillors’ addresses. “Because of the toxic nature of politics at the moment, putting someone’s home address on the internet wasn’t a good idea,” he said, only to be told “we put ourselves up for election and therefore we have to make ourselves available”.

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It is perhaps little surprise that White is not standing again in local elections on Thursday, as part of a wave of one-time political meteors who have decided to quit in what they all agree are unhelpfully polarised and often nasty times. These are mainly people in their 30s who have risen to run councils with budgets of £100m or more, who are quitting after deciding the often thankless job of being a councillor just isn’t worth it anymore. Particularly when the hourly wage, referred to as an allowance, often equates to less than the minimum wage.

Their departure will be keenly felt in a sector already dominated by older people. A survey by the Local Government Association last year found the average age of a councillor in 2018 was 59.4, up from 57.8 in 2004. More than a quarter (26%) of councillors in England were over 70 years old, up from 14% in 2004.

“I know lots of young councillors are lining up to leave in the next round,” said White, a Conservative who was first elected to Pendle council eight years ago. He decided to quit just before Christmas on his way to a charity curry night and said he had “never felt so relieved in my whole life.”

The Liberal Democrat councilllor and opposition leader in Redcar and Cleveland, Josh Mason, 31, is also throwing in the towel. Though proud of his work in local government, he worries about his future career prospects. “Being a councillor for eight years is like a blot on your CV, rather than an asset,” he said, particularly in the Labour-dominated north-east England. “I look at my contemporaries … and I see the levels they have reached in their careers and I think to myself: you’ve been on the local council for eight years and have a part-time PR job but where else might life have taken you if you didn’t have this ball and chain tethered to you of the local authority?”

Councils are not attracting “dynamic young people” and are often dominated by “retirees topping up their pension pots”, said Mason, who earns about £18,000 for his council duties. Even the leader of Redcar council only earns £26,000, despite presiding over a “£100m-plus budget”, he said. “Hats off to people who run local administrations because it’s a huge job. It’s a hugely worthwhile job but it is largely thankless.”

“If you want young people to become councillors, people who aren’t your typical stale, male, pale, retired people, they need to be paid to be able to do that,” said White. “My allowance for being leader of Pendle council is about £6,500 a year, for a 30-hour week, and it’s not tax-free. It’s way less than the minimum wage … People think you are on an MP’s salary and don’t realise this is pretty much a voluntary role.”

Though wary of calling for across-the-board increases in councillors’ allowances (they are not officially salaries), Mason proposes reducing the number of councillors and paying each a full-time living wage. “I don’t think there is an issue with providing the incentives to ensure you get the right representative mix and I don’t believe that currently the financial arrangements of local councils allow for that to happen,” he said.

Only 26% of councillors were in full or part-time employment alongside their council duties, the LGA survey found. When Alex Ganotis became the leader of Stockport council, in Greater Manchester, three years ago, he kept his public sector job, albeit on part-time hours. As the borough’s first ever Labour leader and with no overall majority, he knew he was not likely to be in post for life – unlike over the border in Labour-dominated Manchester, where Sir Richard Leese has had the top job since 1996.

In his eight years as a councillor, Ganotis, 39, has become a father and wants to spend more time with his two sons, aged one and four. “I just think the next four years will be quite important in terms of where they are in life and I want to be around more for them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paul White, pictured in the council chamber, says he knows ‘lots of young councillors lining up to leave in the next round’. Photograph: Courtesy of Paul White

Ganotis, who earned £30,676.80 last year as leader, believes remuneration is less of a problem than the hours councillors have to put in. “I don’t think the allowances are the issue. For me, it’s the time commitment needed to do the role.” He said he usually devoted 40 hours a week to politics and a further 20 to his day job.

White has been ground down by the binary nature of politics, post-EU referendum. “We were given a yes or no decision and everything now is right or wrong. There’s nothing in the middle now … I think that’s what’s made the whole atmosphere of politics horrific, actually.”

Politicians have stopped treating each other with courtesy or respect, he said. At his last council meeting, White said he was told he should be in prison. “He just said it because he can now. If he had said it eight years ago there would have been an uproar, it would have been in the paper, he would have been reported to standards. Eight years ago if you called someone a liar in the council chamber it would have been ‘off with your head’. Now it’s the usual standard of debate. It’s not a debate anymore and that’s the problem. It’s just a slanging match.”

Despite it all, White hasn’t ruled out a return to politics: “Surely at some point this atmosphere has to pass and maybe then it will be enjoyable again.”