Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby is facing criticism after details emerged of a £210,000 “red carpet” fund under his direct personal control.
The Leader’s Development Budget is being used to subsidise a wide variety of events including royal visits, sponsorship of high-profile awards ceremonies, dinners for private organisations and trips in this country and abroad by Coun Whitby and his staff.
The opposition Labour group has accused the Tory council leader of using the little-known budget to keep sensitive spending decisions under wraps at a time when the local authority is having to deliver budget cuts totalling £320 million.
Questions are being raised about accountability since sums of up to £5,000 can be spent if approved by Coun Whitby and one of three cabinet support officers.
The council is refusing to identify the three officials in charge of the purse strings, claiming that to do so would infringe the Data Protection Act. Any sum above £5,000 has to be signed off by a council chief officer.
The fund is described by Coun Whitby’s office as a “last resort reserve after other routes of funding have been explored”.
But expenditure from the development budget does not come before cabinet meetings and has not been inspected at scrutiny committee meetings. Items paid for include policy brainstorming away-days for cabinet members and officials which cost £12,500.
Closing off city centre streets to enable filming of the BBC television drama series Hustle cost the council £13,343 in lost car parking income, but the sum was repaid by Coun Whitby’s fund.
The development budget was also used to cover the cost of Coun Whitby’s stay at the Hyatt Hotel during the 2010 and 2008 Conservative conferences in Birmingham and his stay with an aide at a hotel for the party’s 2009 conference in Manchester, at a total cost for the three events of nearly £8,000.
Two years ago, a root and branch review of the council’s press office and communications strategy, carried out at Coun Whitby’s request by a national agency, cost £17,625 and was paid for out of the fund.
A breakdown of £630,000 spending over the past three years, released following a Freedom of Information Act request by the Birmingham Post, shows that one of the fund’s main uses has been to lure VIPs and personalities to Birmingham. A total of £16,500 was spent on general expenses.
During 2010, £25,000 was approved by Coun Whitby to subsidise the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards at the NEC – an event which the council leader insisted did much to promote Birmingham’s international profile.
A reception in Birmingham for the US Ambassador cost £2,127, while hiring rooms and catering for visits by the Jamaican High Commissioner, the Midland Naval Officers Association and for St George’s Day celebrations cost a total of £9,063.
Sponsorship of two Royal Television Society Awards ceremonies cost £9,000, while £2,000 was used to support a festival in China.
