NEARLY £4 million was spent on Westmorland and Furness Council corporate credit cards in the first ten months of its operation, new data reveals. 

A Freedom of Information request submitted by this publication revealed £3.8m was spent by corporate credit card owned by the council.

According to the Local Government Transparency Code 2015, procurement card transactions, which council workers use to purchase goods and services, must be published publicly every quarter.

There are 251 cards in total with the Freedom of Information request providing information for 223.

The highest-spending corporate credit cardholder spent £64,307.89 from April to November 2023. Schools also receive credit cards and the top school cardholder spent £129,233.49.

24 corporate cardholders and 91 schools cardholders spent more than £10,000. 

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The most expensive months since Westmorland and Furness Council came into power on April 1 last year were July, September and November. £520,591, £500,483 and £573,838 were spent in these months respectively. 

A council spokesman said: “Westmorland and Furness Council do have 86 corporate credit cards allocated to individuals within the organisation for use for critical/emergency expenditure items.

"We also have 165 cards issued to schools in the Westmorland and Furness area. In the first few months of the new council we did allow the use of credit card payments for critical services and invoices whilst the technical issues that we faced with the new shared system approach and system changes were finalised.

“All expenditure via corporate credit cards needs to comply with the council expenditure rules, be within agreed budgets and is subject to monitoring and audit. Whilst the spend figures released via our FOI process appear high, all of the spend is accounted for in the relevant Directorate forecast expenditure and included in the quarterly financial monitoring reports to Cabinet.   

“We have been working on the way we make this data freely available to everyone in a format that can be reused and whilst this was delayed due to technical issues, all previous data is being published on our website soon and we will be updating it monthly to meet the requirements of the Transparency code.”