Highland Councillors Agree Savings In Members' Budget

18th February 2010

Resources Committee Report
Highland Councillors have today agreed to a package of measures to reduce costs arising from Members' travel, catering, councillor surgeries and accommodation expenses.

At the meeting of the Council on 17 December 2009 it was agreed that £50,000 would be removed from the members' budget in 2011/12. These savings are in addition to a previous £105,000 and £78,000 removed from the 2009/10 and 2010/11 members' budgets respectively.

Measures to bring about the 2011/12 year budget savings will include:

members car sharing and making greater use of public transport and cycling;
greater use of video and tele-conferencing; and the expansion of web-casting in order to reduce the need to travel;
a reduction of 20% cost per head or £9,000 savings per year on catering provision of cooked and light lunches at main committee meetings at headquarters;
introduction of a tendering exercise for the provision of members' catering at Council headquarters; and
ceasing to provide tea and coffee for meetings that last less than two hours at Council headquarters.
The current cost of a cooked lunch on main committee days is £8.20 per head and on other meeting days when a light lunch is provided is £5.20 per head. Under a nationally agreed allowance scheme (over which the Council has no authority) members are entitled to claim a maximum of £12.00 in expenses for lunch if a meal is not provided by the Council.

Members also agreed not to include the use of photographs in newspaper adverts promoting members' surgeries which will reduce the cost of advertising these meetings by 14% and to make greater use of the Council's website as a promotional tool for the meetings.

A final commitment to the savings package also included removing the use of colour printer cartridges from members' IT supplies and replacing all new cartridges with black ink only.

Councillor Carolyn Wilson Chairman of The Highland Council's Resources Committee said: "The Council has got to make £60 million savings over the next three years and members are acutely aware of the part that they have to play in achieving efficiencies.

"I look forward to future proposals coming to the Council's Resources Committee on how we can make more significant savings on travel."