Taxpayer cost of black gold

A HARSH recession and years of soaring petrol prices created a divide in Britain between the haves and the have nots. One would have thought that our local authorities, burdened by the weight of the coalition’s spending cuts, would put themselves in the latter group, as they cut swathes of jobs and services.

So it is bizarre and unjustifiable that so many councils in Yorkshire are splashing out large sums on mileage of which the typical motorist could only dream.

The official benchmark for mileage, set by the Inland Revenue, was 40p last year. If millions of workers in the private sector have no choice but to survive on this, then so should their public sector counterparts.

Of course, this should not be taken as an attack on the ordinary state workers who empty our bins, run our schools and fix our roads. Council leaders, however, have a lot to answer for.

Their taxpayer-funded largesse, when Britain faces its deepest spending cuts since the end of the Second World War, is utterly inappropriate. Sadly, it adds to the view that the political masters of many Yorkshire towns and cities are locked in an ivory tower while hard-up workers toil on the land below.

The total bill for mileage expenses, which is likely to top £25m once the full figures are available, marks a significant entry in local authority balance sheets. Yet over the last year we have heard council leaders insist they are being forced into making unpleasant cuts because of the austerity measures emanating from central government. Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary who was previously the leader of Bradford Council, will have to seize greater control of council’s budgeting if the people currently in charge cannot spend our money more wisely.

It also makes a mockery of local authorities’ urging of the public to use lower carbon forms of transport. Council staff are hardly likely to hop on a train or share driving with a colleague when they know they can claim market-beating mileage rates, yet the poor folk whose taxes support them are left to trundle along on the bus because motoring has become so expensive. It is a farce and, as with many decisions at the top of local government, change is long overdue.