£10k bill for councillors’devices

More than £10,000 has been spent on new laptops for Stirling’s councillors and officials,

A total of 33 state-of-theart Lenovo devices — costing around £300 each — have been purchased for the 23 elected representatives and some staff at the local authority.

These are designed to replace the iPad 2 devices that were bought at a cost of £9000 by Stirling Council five years ago.

The local authority say that as Apple recently stopped supporting these devices by providing updates, they were not secure enough for councillors to use.

As a result new laptops were purchased which enable councillors and staff to connect to their corporate nework and access files and emails on the move.

A spokesperson said: “All councillors and some staff were using iPad 2 devices that were purchased in 2012. Apple recently stopped supporting these older devices, which posed a security threat for the council.

“Replacing all 33 of these devices with newer iPad models and the necessary security tokens to access the network would have cost in the

region of £16,000. “A number of products were evaluated, with the Lenovo devices being selected as the preferred replacement option.

“The Lenovo devices enable users to securely connect to the corporate network through DirectAccess, a technology which allows users to access their files and emails wherever they are.

“The total cost of purchasing these 33 devices was £10,560, which was £5,440 cheaper than purchasing replacement iPads.”

In 2012 Stirling Council said that the purchase of the new handheld gadgets should save more than £20,000 annually in printing costs while enhancing councillors’ ability to carry out business and communicate with constituents and council officers on the move and from home.

The Observer reported on Wednesday there has been a two per cent drop in the amount of salaries and expenses paid to Stirling’s councillors – but the overall costs of the 22 representatives remains well over £400,000.

Figures revealed that in the 12 months to March 31 councillors cost the taxpayer £427,234.25 compared with £435,847.79 in the previous 12 months.

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