Council officers branded ‘dodgy’ over fancy dinner and free tickets
Somerset Council’s gifts and hospitality register shows officers accepted a £40 dinner from Newton Europe – a consultancy firm working closely with the council – sparking calls for greater transparency
It all kicked off . . . (Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
Somerset Council officers have been labelled “dodgy” for accepting a dinner from a consultancy firm that is closely associated with the council. Every half-year, the council releases its updated gifts and hospitality register, detailing all items worth £25 or more that have been either directly gifted to officers or provided as part of wider hospitality.
Gifts over the past six months have varied from invitations to award ceremonies and overnight accommodation to John Lewis gift cards and bottles of wine – though not all the gifts offered were accepted.
Alan Hemsley, a co-opted member of the council’s standards committee (i.e. not a sitting councillor), used a public meeting on July 23 to criticise the acceptance of gifts – though he clarified that he did not believe any crime had been committed.
Bente Height slammed the freebies(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
Councillor Bente Height (Shepton Mallet, Reform UK ) used the same meeting to call for more transparency about gifts and hospitality, warning that the public might otherwise “think this smelled a little bit”.
Unlike the councillors’ list of declared gifts and hospitality, the officers’ list does not name the individuals who accepted the gifts – only the council department in which they work.
The gifts accepted in the last six months include a £40 dinner with representatives of Newton Europe (which is leading the ongoing transformation programme), £130 for a “group invite” to the Yunex traffic signals event in Bristol and £285 worth of tickets to the National Annual Scrutiny and Governance Conference.
Officers also accepted an invitation to the Civil Engineering Contractors Association’s annual dinner and awards held in Cardiff in March, along with overnight hotel accommodation – the disclosure of which revealed that Centregreat would be carrying out the upcoming improvements to the Edithmead roundabout in Highbridge.
Scott Wooldridge hit back(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
Several gifts were declined by officers – including wine, calendars and assorted gifts from highways contractor Walters UK, which was refused since their contract was shortly up for renewal.
Mr Hemsley took issue with these gifts – though he did not single out any individual officer.
He said: “The Newton Europe declaration appears to be an officer taking a dinner from a company that is employed by the council. That is dodgy in my books.
“Regarding the Centregreat gifts, I have great difficulty in accepting that three officers should be having a dinner paid for by contractors that has done work with the council and are probably going to do more work with the council. The whole thing is looking, to somebody out there, like officers are taking money from prospective or existing contractors. That’s what it looks like to the public.
“I don’t say they are, by any stretch of the imagination, but officers need to be aware of what people outside of the council are thinking.”
Scott Wooldridge, the council’s head of governance and democratic services, stated that the council was “being more transparent than many of its peers” in publishing these gifts and hospitality, including those which had been declined.
On the subject of the Centregreat gifts, he added: “If you are outside of the county, undertaking work on behalf of the council, you are allowed to claim within an allowance period for an evening meal and lunch. This appears to be a conference hosted by a particular organisation, where this limited company appears to have provided the accommodation and food associated with that conference.”
Ms Height suggested that the council should do more to reassure the public that officers were accepting gifts in good faith and were not being influenced in their decisions.
She said: “If I was a member of the general public and not a councillor, I would think that it smelled a little bit, to be quite honest. We should put something that could be sent out to the public so they know we are not dodgy here.”
A further report on these issues will be discussed at the committee’s next meeting in October.
