Concern grows over investment agency spending

Glen Miller, leader of the Tory group of councillors in Bradford, said the spending by the investment agency, which included tens of thousands spend on foreign trips and expensive taxi fares, called into question whether councils would have sufficient control over how money is spent.

Leeds and Partners has been primarily funded by Leeds City Council to attract new business investment into the city. But it is now expanding its brief to include the Leeds City Region, an enterprise partnership which also includes neighbouring councils, like Bradford, committing their own financial support.

It has been revealed Lurene Joseph, chief executive of Leeds and Partners, spent £285 travelling in a taxi from Leeds to her home in Buckinghamshire before embarking on a nine-night stay at a top hotel in Boston, with a colleague, which cost taxpayers in excess of £8,000.

Rooms booked at the upmarket Charles Hotel last September cost upto $529 a night – around £350 – while more than £5,000 was spent on another trip to Boston in February this year for two delegates with a further £11,500 spent on an April visit to the same destination for four delegates.

More than £12,000 was spent sending nine delegates to the MIPIM commercial property conference in Cannes in March during which Ms Joseph stayed separately in a five-star hotel. Spending on a corporate credit card allocated to Ms Joseph, who receives a basic salary of £160,000, included hundreds of pounds a time spent on restaurant bills.

Leeds Council, which is providing £2m in funding to Leeds and Partners this year, defended the spending and said the city had to take a dynamic national and international approach to securing inward investment. The trips to Boston were focused on a private health company with the aim of encouraging relocation of part of the business to Leeds.

Coun Miller said Bradford taxpayers must have a clear idea of how their money is being spent with bodies like the Leeds City Region, which will today confirm the go-ahead for a new £10m investment fund to support major construction projects.

He said there was “considerable concern” at Ms Joseph’s salary and the scale of spending on upmarket hotels, taxi fares and restaurant bills.

Coun Miller said there were further fears over Leeds and Partners’ status as a private company, which means it is not obliged to follow council financial policies, and its record of awarding contracts without going through a tendering process.

The Tory group leader also criticised Leeds Council’s refusal to provide a full breakdown of Leeds and Partners’ expenses spending to the Yorkshire Post and said: “If Bradford taxpayers’ money is to be given to this or any other company, I expect to know what they spend it on and I will be expecting the Leader of Bradford Council, Dave Green, not to allow the withholding of this information.

“Leeds Council may well defend this kind of spending and ‘not question the rationale for individual transactions’, whilst ‘being confident that Leeds and Partners are committed to demonstrating financial probity’, but I will expect Bradford residents’ money to be spent in an open and transparent manner. I will be contacting Dave Green for his thoughts on this and I shall be speaking to colleagues at the other West Yorkshire councils to ensure that they keep an eye on this too.”

But Bradford Council’s Labour deputy leader, Imran Hussain, insisted the authority was “committed to financial transparency, probity and value for money”.

He added: “Since taking leadership of Bradford Council in 2010 Labour has opened the books up to unprecedented levels of scrutiny, helping us to eliminate the wasteful, excessive spending culture of our Conservative predecessors. We demand high standards of financial probity and transparency and that applies to any arrangements to which we are a party.”

Leeds City Region would “deliver significant economic benefits to Bradford and the wider region and we will be vigilant in making sure resources are being used to that end”, he added.