Middlesbrough Council - News Forum - Setting a light to the News

HOW much does it cost to change a lightbulb? Well, it seems more than £1,000 for one North council.
That’s the amount dim bosses at the cash-strapped local authority forked out for an art expert to jet into the region twice – to help put up then take down this string of lights at a modern art show.
Middlesbrough Council – which made £6.8m in cuts and savings earlier this year – paid £532 for an “art courier” to spend one day and night on Teesside last March to help install the Felix Gonzalez-Torres show at the town’s mima gallery – and £142 of that was for “refreshments”.
The same expert returned four months later, at the end of mima’s A Certain Distance, Endless Light exhibition, “to oversee condition checking and de-installing” of a piece of art called Untitled – a string of dozens of lightbulbs suspended from the ceiling.
That two-day trip cost the public purse £529.80, meaning £1,060 was spent on the courier’s two trips.
And just seven months later Middlesbrough Council announced plans to make £52,700 of savings by slashing working hours at the Central Square-based gallery.
Charlotte Linacre, Campaign Manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It’s increasingly difficult for local authorities to plead poverty with a straight face when they’re prepared to spend so frivolously.”
Mike Hill, regional organiser for UNISON, added: “’UNISON has consistently asked employers to review all unnecessary expenditure and waste in order to achieve efficiency savings and off set job losses and reductions in Terms and Conditions of service. This includes the use of expensive consultants, external contractors and unnecessary travel costs both within and outside the UK. In some areas we are winning the argument, but it is clear that in others the employer needs to look a little closer to home.”
The bill forms part of a whopping £316,919 spent in two years by North councils on overseas trips in which council executives have journeyed all over the globe for conferences and meetings. The Sunday Sun acquired details of all trips paid for by 11 North authorities in 2009 and 2010, using the Freedom of Information Act.
As well as spending £1,060 on flights, hotel stays and refreshments for the art courier, Middlesbrough spent £342.96 on a flight home to Prague for a “service user”.
And artistic forays abroad accounted for £7,158 of the £23,494 spent on overseas travel by Middlesbrough – 30% of the whole amount.
That includes £3,144.82 on a nine-day trip to New York for two officers for ‘acquisition and collection development’, and a further £400 on sending an officer to Dublin “to make relationships with Dublin based galleries”.
Sunderland spent the most on foreign jaunts – £125,727 – sending leaders and officers on 73 trips to places including China, Norway, France, Germany, the USA, Japan and South Africa.
The trips include £11,695 spent on sending the chief executive and two other senior managers to China for two signing ceremonies and £10,750 on sending three senior officers in 2009 to Washington DC, US, for ‘Friendship Agreement Activity”.
A spokeswoman for the council said: “The foreign travel reflects the international strategy and the need for cities such as Sunderland to engage internationally. The type of activity creates short and longer term benefits.
“8,250 new jobs and investment totaling £1.5bn has been attracted to the city from overseas in the last six years.”
Newcastle City Council spent £76,187 on 126 trips in the same time period, including forking out £1,992 on sending one council member and three members of staff to Hamburg, Germany, in December 2009 on a “visit to a working tunnel”.
A Newcastle City Council spokesman said: “Members and officers only travel abroad if it is absolutely necessary.
“Every effort is made to ensure that the cheapest form of travel is used, and managers must ensure that the numbers of those travelling are kept to an absolute minimum.
“We are always looking for new ways to save money and are actively reviewing our spend on corporate travel.”
Many trips were made by officials from Northumberland County Council but the majority were funded by outside organisations, meaning the taxpayers footed just £938.10.
A similar picture emerged at Durham County Council where £14,621 was spent on trips to the likes of Brussels, Prague, Belgium and France, but many trips were part or wholly funded through EU grant funding.
Hartlepool council made just one foreign trip, to Stavenger in Norway, as part of its research ahead of last year’s Tall Ships Race, but all expenses were paid for by Sail Training International organisation.
North Tyneside’s former chief executive racked up a relatively low bill of £3,327 on four trips in 2009, including one to the real estate conference MIPIM in Cannes, France, which is attended by most of the UK’s authorities. Gateshead spent £47,632 on 34 trips including £18,790 on a youth exchange to Komatsu, Japan, and £1,117 on a journey to Spain for a Eurocities annual general meeting, where officers worked on developing the NewcastleGateshead brand.
Chief Executive of Gateshead Council Roger Kelly said: “Every potential foreign trip is considered very carefully and only those that produce real benefits for Gateshead and its residents are agreed to.
“They must help us do vital work, like attracting new jobs and businesses into Gateshead, or giving local youngsters a once in a lifetime learning opportunity.”