A COUNCIL shedding 1,500 jobs and making £60million of cuts has made over 50 taxpayer-funded trips abroad in the past three years, the Weekly News can reveal.

Somerset County Council officers visited 17 foreign countries between April 2007 and April 2010, costing the taxpayer nearly £40,000.

They included a nine-day trip by an officer from the Children and Young People’s Directorate to Chile, to assess whether the grandmother of two children in the council’s care was a suitable guardian for them.

The council said the children were successfully placed with the grandmother, and the trip would save taxpayers £600,000 in care costs over 15 years.

Other trips, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, included:

  • October 2007 – six days in Africa to set up a music exchange programme (cost: £1929.74)
  • June 2008 – Three-day visit to the Puy du Fou festival in Vendee, France (£3018.87)
  • July 2008 – four days in Argentina at a music therapy conference (£279.40)
  • October 2008 – three days in Copenhagen for a conference about using technology in libraries (£414.39)
  • 2009 (date not specified) – The Do You Speak European? finals in Brussels (£849.30) The council said there was no set budget for foreign trips and that decisions on whether to take them rested with its chief executive and corporate directors.

A council spokesman: “Each potential trip is treated on its merits in terms of what the council can get out of it.”

Nigel Behan, branch secretary for public sector union UNISON, said: “We would not disagree with councillors travelling to learn better practices but there are other ways of communicating.

“What is the cost and what is the benefit to the council?”

He added the union would be interested to learn about council trips to IBM in America as part of the South West One arrangement.

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