Shropshire Star

Shropshire councils reveal cost of foreign travels

Local authorities in Shropshire, Telford and Mid Wales have spent a combined total of more than £35,000 on foreign travel for officers and councillors in the last three years, figures have revealed.

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Less than a quarter of that amount across the three councils has been met by the taxpayer, with EU funding and lottery grants largely used to foot the bill.

Destinations visited since 2011 include Malta, Italy, France, Estonia, Romania and Hungary.

The figures, released following a Freedom of Information request, show Shropshire Council has spent £19,155.78 since 2011, of which £4,086.56 was directly funded by the taxpayer.

But its spending on foreign travel has tumbled dramatically year on year. The authority spent £8,288.18 in the financial year 2012/13 but that fell to £2,615.56 in 2013/14 and just £1,051.11 so far in 2014/15.

It authorised visits from officers to Romania, France, Belgium and Estonia on fact-finding missions for the LEADER - Liaison Entre Actions de Developpement de l'Economie Rurale - project.

The trips were funded completely through the project, which seeks to improve the economic wellbeing of rural areas.

The figures showed the only trips funded by taxpayers were for social workers to visit Ireland for "child protection" cases.

Keith Barrow, leader of Shropshire Council, said the authority only spent money on foreign travel in "exceptional circumstances" and when there was a very good case for doing so.

He added: "The report shows that our only spend on foreign travel in the past three years has been to enable social workers to travel abroad as an essential part of their work.

"Any other trips made by staff and councillors have been externally funded, and all have been carried out as an important part of their work for, or on behalf of, the council."

Telford & Wrekin Council has only authorised five overseas trips since 2011 - and none for the past two years - at a cost of just £378 to the taxpayer.

Telford & Wrekin Council spent £300 to send an urban designer to Holland for an "examination of international best practice in housing".

Another £78 was paid for an ICT infrastructure analyst to visit Budapest in Hungary for the Ubiquiti World Conference - "one of the market leaders within the field of point to point wireless technologies".

Telford & Wrekin Council spokesman Russell Griffin said the authority strove to keep all foreign travel to "an absolute minimum".

He added: "Trips abroad are only authorised when there is a clear business case for them to be made.

"We take steps to ensure we get full value for money from each trip including utilising grant funding where possible.

"Every trip abroad has to be personally signed by the chief executive/managing director and there has been no trips at all for more than two years."

Powys County Council forked out £15,881.02, with £3,970.25 taxpayer funded.

It included trips to Warsaw in Poland and Rome and Perugia in Italy as part of the I-SPEED - Information Society Policies for Sustainable European Economic Development - scheme.

The project seeks to improve tourism through the "innovative use of ICT" and funded 75 per cent of the costs of the trips, the figures revealed.

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