Rio, Dubai Las Vegas... councils pay £2.6m for staff flights
Anger as cash-strapped local authorities fund far-f lung trips
SCOTLAND’S councils are spending a fortune sending staff on overseas trips – sparking criticism that taxpayers’ money is being squandered on junkets.
An investigation by The Scottish Mail on Sunday has revealed that cashstrapped local authorities have spent £2.6 million on flights in only two years.
Jet-setting senior staff headed to Las Vegas, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Tokyo and Dubai in 2013 and 2014.
Among the 10,000 flights were trips to Los Angeles for training courses, jaunts to the Cannes Film Festival and Open Championship, and one case where staff and children were treated to a holiday in Tenerife paid from the public purse.
Many councils spent money on visiting twin cities abroad, including Hanover, Shenzhen, Florence and Paris, or attending Scottish-themed events.
One even flew a team to Malawi on an aid mission on flights costing £10,000 – a sum that is 20 times the average annual income in the country, and could have bought 3,000 anti-malaria nets.
While councils insist most trips were for essential business, questions were raised last night about the value of so many staff travelling the world.
Eben Wilson, of Taxpayer-Scotland, said: ‘It’s a disgrace. Scottish taxpayers are keen that their local councils stick to servicing their local communities with localised services. Running up air miles and overseas hotel bills is simply not a good use of our money when there are cuts in many services.’
Figures obtained under Freedom of Information laws show Scotland’s 32 councils spent £2,648,729 on airfares in the past two years. Most were for domestic flights for meetings, conferences, training and other business. But many took staff around the world.
The Western Isles recorded the big- gest bill, totalling £829,704 for 4,062 flights, almost all between the islands or to the UK mainland.
Shetland Council was in second place, shelling out £567,485 for 1,400 flights – with one official flying to Svetogorsk in Russia for ‘a board meeting’ at a cost of £1,649. Next was Orkney, which spent £398,000 on 1,482 airfares.
Staff at Aberdeen City Council racked up the most overseas air miles with an array of foreign trips, including to Rio, Vancouver, Mumbai, Beijing, New York, Las Vegas, Seoul, Nagasaki, Mexico City, Oklahoma, New Orleans and Johannesburg. Aberdeen’s 715 flights – 287 of them international – cost taxpayers £219,693.
One council worker went to Las Vegas on a ‘networking trip’ to persuade the World Routes Conference – a tourism and aviation event – to come to Aberdeen.
Last week, a council spokesman said the trip was successful and the event was being staged at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre this weekend, with 1,200 delegates from around the world in attendance, and an estimated £1.8 million injected into the local economy.
Scotland’s largest local authority, Glasgow City Council, paid out £111,528 for 318 airfares, among them two for social work staff to attend ‘training’ in Los Angeles in 2014. Council officials said the LA trips were for a ‘family therapy programme’ to help support youngsters with behaviour or emotional troubles.
Another official was flown to Nuremberg to attend a Burns Supper in January last year, and the staff sent to Malawi had been on a ‘humanitarian aid visit’.
Clackmannanshire Council used the public purse to fund a weeklong holiday to Tenerife for four staff and three children from a care home, with £2,317.41 flights.
City of Edinburgh Council paid for someone to attend Arab Health Week i n Dubai, sent employees to Cannes and shelled out for a flight to Doha in the Gulf for an ‘alumni dinner’.
Dundee’s Lord Provost Robert Duncan was flown to Frankfurt for the Mozart Festival in May 2013, then Washington DC to attend a Scottish Christmas Walk at a combined cost of £2,361.52 for flights alone.
All councils defended their spending on flights and insisted they were vital for day-to-day business. Western Isles Council said it was ‘hardly surprising’ their spending was high because of the geography of the area.
A Glasgow City Council spokesman insisted there were ‘many reasons’ why travel might be necessary, from social work cases to attracting investment and jobs.
‘Simply not a good use of our money’