Anger over county council trips

Suffolk: County council staff takes 175 trips abroad - at a cost of £98,000

BY HOLLIE-RAE MERRICK Friday, June 10, 2011
9:15 AM

THOUSANDS of pounds have been spent on sending council employees abroad, as new data reveals the far flung places they have travelled to.

The figures, which was released by Suffolk County Council following a Freedom of Information request by The Evening Star, shows that county council employees have embarked upon a total of 175 trips abroad to 28 countries since the beginning of January 2005.

In total, trips to foreign destinations since 2005 have cost a total of £97,994.

Almost 50per cent of this was funded through the county council, with £23,804 paid by contributing sources including, the European Regional Development Fund and the European Interreg fund scheme.

Destinations have included Denmark, Italy, Romania and Latvia, while one employee was sent on a five day trip to Boston to complete a five day course as part of a masters degree. Costing the county council £2,000, they said the officer was now putting his training into use.

In addition, £26,724 was partially fundraised for trips, with the county council also stumping up a proportion of the cost. The breakdown of the levels of contribution from the council was not revealed.

The fundraising meant that Children and Young People’s Services could venture on a total of 28 trips.

Turkey, Bulgaria, Africa and Canada were amongst the destinations, along with a trip to Jamaica which saw a social worker travel solo to complete a child’s adoption.

A county council spokesman said that one trip to Africa, which cost £16,000, was mainly funded through the children partaking in the trip raising money. He said that the reason for the trip was to take eight children in care to visit orphanages in Africa.

A handful of trips were made to locations including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, for the Power Cluster Project – a programme developing offshore wind power in the North Sea region.

Almost £500 was forked out to visit an InterTraffic Exhibition in Amsterdam to consider the best digital speed camera for use in Suffolk. The trip which lasted three days took place in April 2008.

Four trips were made to Nice, France, by the Passenger Transport Department, to get training on Real Time Passenger Information system at a total cost of £4,135.

The fire service’s chief fire officer was sent on a trip to South Africa in February 2010, for a leadership course which was organised by the National School of Government – the plane ticket cost £785

Councillor Jane Storey, the county council’s portfolio holder for Resource Management and Transformation, said that trips abroad were only made when no alternative option is available.

She said: “All departments will have had to provide a strong business case to justify officers making foreign trips as part of their overall duties.

“All such budget requests are judged on a case by case basis and only where it is considered necessary - or where no alternative is available - is permission granted.

“It is important to stress that these trips were made over a six year period, and for a variety of reasons - so it would be wrong to view this amount as a recent, or isolated, example of expenditure.”

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Two town MP’s have urged Suffolk County Council to “get a grip” on their finances, deeming the latest figures as another example of “frivolous” spending.

Dr Daniel Poulter, MP for North Ipswich and Central Ipswich told the Evening Star that he believed that the spending was only justified if employees were learning and the county was benefiting.

“I would be concerted that there is a prevailing attitude at Suffolk County Council that must come from examples of Andrea Hill and her stays at locations such as Sandbanks.

“There is not an issue if these trips are done within a reasonable cost, but I don’t think that it is completely necessary for people to be funded to complete a five day part of a masters degree.

“We must ensure that these attitudes to spending do not prevail, any spending to save people abroad should be greatly assessed and should be under an extremely stringent budget. We must get a grip on the funding of these trips because it appears Suffolk County Council have lost grip on reality.

Ben Gummer, MP for Ipswich, said: “Over the past few years people in Ipswich have had to make massive savings.

“However, it seems that at Suffolk County Council feel they have immunity from this great recession that we as a country are only just recovering from.

“I hope that under the new leadership of Mark Bee, someone will get a grip on these frivolous items of expenditure.

“After all, these trips could have paid for an additional teaching assistant.”

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Examples of trips

- September 2008 – Aarhus, Denmark – to present a paper to annual conference of the Association of Environmental Archaeologists – £298

- February 2008 – Nice, France – A Site Acceptance Test for Ipswich’s Real Time Passenger Information system – £962

- May 2009 – Bruges, Holland, – to participate in a ‘Dry Ports’ seminar. Relevant to Port of Felixstowe and allied development – £449 paid for by Haven Gateway

- March 2009 and July 2009 – Klass, Germany – to visit company building new appliances – no cost to the county council

- October 2006 – France and Germany – A study tour of libraries – paid for by individual concerned.

- June 2008 and December 2008 – Dublin, Ireland – trips made by the Trading Standards department to investigate crimes. Investigations were not connected by involved a visit to the Ebay headquarters – £1,016

- March 2006 – Germany – Study tour of waste treatment plants –majority funded by DEFRA, Suffolk County Council contributed £2,500. The County Council used budget airlines, Air Berlin and Ryan Air. All accommodation and meals and transfer travel in Germany were provided by DEFRA.

- March 2011 – Denmark – To attend a POWER Cluster Project development meeting – £432 – half of which was funded through Europe.

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13 comments

Don't we all need to be a bit more grown up about this ? Many of the trips abroad are about someone doing their job so why is someone working in the public sector treated differently from someone in the private sector where so called expenses are rarely subjected to public scrutiny . We all pay for such things through our purchases. Local government is actually pretty good at managing money compared to MPs, Whitehall and the banks. Let's have less misleading headlines and more maturity in local government reporting.

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Civic Sid

Sunday, June 12, 2011
It's all very well moaning about these so-called "Suffolk County Council junkets" but at the end of the day, you can't have a first class local council with the best senior managers that money can buy unless they have trips abroad and stay in swanky hotels like world class politicians of national governments and all those powerful and important people who travel the world for work related to the IMF, the UN etc.

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martha farquhar

Friday, June 10, 2011
I, for one, am outraged. How dare the council spend nearly £10,000 a year of taxpayers' money on frivolities like protecting vulnerable children, fighting crime and economic development. On a more serious note, perhaps the EADT should consider looking at the £500+ spending data and ask why the council is spending almost £1m a month to its Property Maintenance Contractors. Has it never heard of employing its own handymen?

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56

Friday, June 10, 2011
well i agree with the people above what a waste of money the council seem to be doing this a lot they need to cut back on the spending and all the cut backs buses cut off explorer cards stopped cos council no money i wounder what expenditures going on at the other council st Edmund's house also, we the people wouldn't have know any off this but thanks to the whistleblower ,this as come to light Andrea hill also well i say thanks to the anonymous whistleblower why is it we have gagging orders in the UK and cant speak out but other countries we can well done to the whistleblower and now we now know what some of the taxpayers money goes on they need to stop the over spending and more investigating into whats going on

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angela greenway

Friday, June 10, 2011
To give this some perspective - given the 50 per cent funded by the Council over a period of 5 years gives a figure of roughly £9800.00 per year. A quick check online and you'll see this is hardly excessive. Kent managed to spend £56,000 on foreign trips in 200910 and Sunderland £82,228.

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Nigel Noakes

Friday, June 10, 2011
I have to agree with John Green on this. Typical hyperbole in the headline giving the impression that this was all recent travel, when it's actually spread over SIX YEARS! And some of the trips included in the count were paid for by the individuals so didn't actually cost us taxpayers anything. Still, at least we've been spared the usual nonsense from a Taxpayers "alliance" spokesperson.

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beerlover

Friday, June 10, 2011
I completely agree with John Green and the headline is completely misleading since the money was spent over 6 years. I wonder just how much the Council is spending answering all the FOI requests that Archant make!

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blue

Friday, June 10, 2011
Knee jerk reactions from the MPs. Let's think for a moment. This is about 30 trips a year going through the accounts of a huge organisation, with half the money paid for by others. Some of the trips were by children in care - the county's most disadvantaged youngsters. Maybe managers and staff will learn overseas better ways of running a local authority - clearly very necessary. There are plenty of scandals, but this doesn't really make the top 20.

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John Green

Friday, June 10, 2011
If all of these expenses are true then the electorate should remeber this when it comes to voting at the next County Council elections. Our elected members must get a grip of the expenses and draw up an approved list of those that can be seen as reasonable for the benefit of the County. Any that are authorised should then be dealt with in the manner that all good employers deal with them - swift disciplinary action up to and including removal.

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David isaac

Friday, June 10, 2011
Sue - I didn't even bother voting so that they could never come back and blame me.... safest way. Is it like that phrase "what if they gave a war and nobody came?" - if no-one (absolutley no-one) voted would they just go away and leave us alone?

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Citizen

Friday, June 10, 2011
Why didn't the SCC employee travelling to a course in Boston for a Masters Degree pay for it himself like thousands of students attending UK universities will have to do under the present Government ? Also the SCC should look again at their 'penny pinching' attitude in withdrawing local students' Xplore Cards. This lot must get real !!!!!!!

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Brian Betts

Friday, June 10, 2011
Easy come, easy go when it's not your money! This type of "we're entitled" attitude permeates SCC from top to bottom, and includes the various bunts and nice little earners that the councillors feel they so deserve. When added to all the money wasted elsewhere on all sorts of madcap projects it amounts to a fortune. SCC is completely dysfunctional and to use the horrible current phrase of choice "not fit for purpose".

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T Doff

Friday, June 10, 2011
Wherever the funding came from it is still publicly sourced and they have the absolute nerve to issue us with a dire warning - this tired out institution states - we are responsible for the imposed cuts cos we did not vote for an amalgamation! I am incensed. We did not vote for a Council to rip us off . We did not vote for Andrea on her very high salary. We were not responsible for the banks collapsing yet we are being emotionally and financially punished by this out of date out of touch County Council. How dare they!!! and you can add Babergh District Council to that.

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sue douglas

Friday, June 10, 2011

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Suffolk: County council staff takes 175 trips abroad - at a cost of £98,000

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