Exclusive: Gambler runs up £2,678 bill on council mobile

Doncaster Council has confirmed the member of staff has now left and it is trying to recover the money.

A spokeswoman said the worker, based in trading services, would have been dismissed had he not already chosen to go. The phone received 1,800 premium-rate texts, each costing £1.27.

The council added that the member of staff, who has not been named, did not use public money to place any bets.

Use of another phone, available to one or more staff in children’s services, is also under investigation after a £1,938 bill was run up over the same quarter, between July and September last year.

The council, which is embarking on a £73m programme of cuts over the next four years, said the misuse was discovered during routine checks and it is now carrying out a full-scale review of phone usage across the authority.

In all, it has 2,740 mobile phones for staff and councillors, including 879 Blackberries. The annual bill is estimated at £500,000, extrapolated from a figure of £125,154 the council identified from the April to June quarter last year. The total is a relatively small amount in the context of its cuts programme but elected Mayor Peter Davies said phone usage illustrated a “culture of waste” which he is determined to eliminate.

The English Democrat Mayor acknowledged that some staff needed the phones to do their jobs effectively but he suggested many did not and more than half a million pounds a year was being “thrown away” on mobiles.

“The whole thing, like many things in local government, has got completely out of hand,” he added. “I’ve asked for a complete rundown of the situation. I’m waiting for the results of the survey but my suspicion is most people don’t need these things.”

And he also specifically targeted councillors’ use of mobile phones for which bills are paid by the authority. The Mayor insisted councillors should pay their own mobile phone bills out of an annual allowance of £12,700 and he would be looking to push through a policy to that effect.

Mayor Davies said he paid all his own mobile phone bills and added: “Councillors should be using their own funds for these sorts of purposes. It ought to come by common consent this is not the right way to use council taxpayers’ money.” Commenting on his proposed policy, he said: “If I can’t do it, I will embarrass the people stopping me doing it.”

The phones are only intended for council business. Between October 2009 and September 2010, the total bill for councillors was almost £32,200. The authority has 63 members but during that period up to 15 chose not to use a council mobile at all. The average annual bill was £630 per councillor but that included rental fees of around £250.

Liberal Democrat group leader Paul Coddington said Mayor Davies was trying to score political points to deflect attention from the real issues surrounding the severity of council cuts.

He added: “I have a council Blackberry which I use as necessary and judiciously. I mainly need it to pick up emails while I am out, when I have to be in contact with colleagues and council staff. I have a phone in my house and a computer, both of which I use for council business and for which I pay myself.

“Mayor Davies is attempting to use this as a tactic to take people’s eyes off the real problems we are facing.”

The Labour and Tory group leaders did not respond to a request for comment.