Council day trips questioned

4.43.29pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 20th Aug 2007

Councillor Royce Longton will be tabling a question to the next meeting of full council asking about the value and relevance of council-organised day trips for staff. This comes in the wake of the recent visit of 65 planning staff to Cardiff for a day.

"Whilst I am delighted to see the improvement in the Council's Planning service, I am going to be questioning the relevance of these trips to our day to day work", commented Councillor Longton. "Cardiff is a city many times the size of Newbury and the regeneration projects undertaken there are in a different league to our own vision. Localised day trips to similar towns would surely bear more value - Basingstoke or Windsor spring to mind. On top of this the true cost of taking this number of staff out of work is likely to run to £10,000 or more when adding transport costs to a day's wage bill multiplied by 65."

Lib Dem Leader Jeff Brooks echoed Councillor Longton's concerns:

"I will be interested to hear how the Millennium Stadium bears any direct significance to projects in Newbury or West Berkshire and delighted to hear reassurances that there are no backlogs of planning applications resulting from this day out."