BARNSLEY Council spent almost £17,000 on flights during a three-year period, figures released by the TaxPayers’ Alliance reveal.
The figures are part of a wider study showing that local authorities across the country spent almost £6.8m on flights between January 2015 and February 2018 - some of them in business class.
But Barnsley Council told the Chronicle it always keeps costs to a minimum and only books economy tickets.
Barnsley’s total number of flights over the period was 68, all of them within Europe. The total cost was £16,806.97, giving an average cost per flight of £247.16.
The number of flights was twice the 34 paid for by Doncaster Council, costing £12,678.98, and more than double the 29 in Rotherham, which cost £7,990.97.
In South Yorkshire only Sheffield spent more on flights - £63,398.13 on 118 flights.
The council said all of the flights had been taken by council officers, and not elected councillors. Several councillors made trips to Europe to visit First World War battlefields during the period, however, all of them paid for these trips themselves, a council spokesman stressed.
Coun Alan Gardiner, a spokesman for the council’s ruling cabinet, said: “We’re committed to delivering value for money and only use flights where there’s a clear business need and benefit to the council.
“We make sure that costs are kept to a minimum by flying economy class. We’re also increasingly using new technology for a lot of our work, such as video conferencing, to reduce the need for travel costs.
“All of the flights highlighted by the TaxPayers’ Alliance were for officers, mainly junior members of staff. The majority of them were linked to the our work for the URBACT tech towns programme, which was fully funded by the EU.
“We’ve had lots of benefits from being part of this programme, such as a rise in high tech jobs, higher occupancy of the Digital Media Centre and our current work on creating a Digital Campus.
“The council did not pay for any flights for visits to former wartime battlefields in Europe.”
Barnsley Council’s figures attracted less scrutiny from the TaxPayers’ Alliance than some other local authorities. The campaign group’s chief executive John O’Connell said Sunderland City Council had spent £26,584 on six business class flights to Tokyo, while Northamptonshire County Council spent £9,326 on six flights to Montego Bay, Jamaica, including several seats in premium economy class.
“For many families, council tax is the largest monthly bill to pay, and it’s shocking that their hard earned money is being misspent by some local authorities in this way,” Mr O’Connell said.
“These local authorities need to find millions in savings in the coming years and with modern technology like video conferencing they needn’t spend large sums of taxpayers’ money on plane tickets.”
