Opinion: ‘It’s easy to spend other people’s money, but this sort of wastage has to stop’

It’s no secret times are tough at the moment. We’re in the depths of a global cost-of-living crisis, are dealing with the economic fall-out from a disastrous series of Covid-19 lockdowns, and the consequences of Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine.

Our money doesn’t stretch as far as it used to and we’ve all had to tighten our budgets and keep an eye on our spending. So why hasn’t that message filtered through to our councils?

In May, I was elected as a Conservative councillor for West Bank aard.

I sit on Mansfield Council as part of the first Conservative opposition in the council’s history – despite the national kicking the public gave the Tories nationally, we made very significant gains in Mansfield.

Part of the job of an opposition councillor is to hold the Labour council to account, challenge decisions and call out things that don’t sit right.

A foundation of Conservativism is sensible spending. In other words, “don’t spend money you haven’t got, on things you don’t need”.

It’s a simple principle, but one which seems to have fallen out of favour at the Civic Centre.

Upon taking my seat, I was invited to collect my “gear” from the Civic Centre.

I pitched up, went through a quick induction on how to turn on a laptop and walked away with a new Thinkbook laptop, an iPhone and a plethora of gadgets including a keyboard, mouse, headset and adapters. By my rough calculation, I bagged almost £2,000 worth of IT equipment.

More than a month later, the laptop sits unopened on my kitchen table, the headset and accessories remain in their boxes in my office and the iPhone remains barely used.

Everything I need to do as a councillor can be done through logging in – securely – on my own laptop.

My own laptop itself has all the necessary security mechanisms and is therefore just as secure – if not more secure – than the equipment paid for out of the public purse.

There are 36 councillors on the council. Even by my rudimentary maths skills, that works out at about £60,000 worth of gear, not to mention the actual costs of the phone contract, repairs and replacements.

To put this in perspective, the average salary of a neighbourhood warden is £20,000. There is no such thing as “council money”. This money is our money. And in my view, is being squandered.

Surely there is little need for this egregious spending? Many other local authorities adopt a “bring your own device” policy, allowing councillors to use their own laptops/phones. I wasn’t given that option.

Don’t misunderstand me. The role of a councillor is tremendously important. It involves a great deal of work, and much of that work is done digitally, but the equipment Mansfield Council has spent our council tax on is wholly excessive commensurate with the work we do.

I will be writing to the council to explore whether or not I can donate my laptop to a library or school for the four years I’m in office – and I would like to see other councillors follow suit.