Council defends money spent on stamps
POSTAGE has cost Tewkesbury Borough Council a total of £220,741 in the last three years.
In an age of communication where email has often replaced letters, the figure will shock some taxpayers in the borough.
It was obtained by the Echo through a Freedom of Information request.
The breakdown of the details released by the council show that it spent £74,772 on postage in the 2011/12 financial year. The figure for 2010/11 was £69,954 and for 2009/10 it was £78,014.
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But Tewkesbury spent far less on increasingly expensive stamps than the Forest of Dean District Council and Stroud District Council. The former spent £526,493 and the latter £456,721 over the last three years.
Tewkesbury's director of resources George Hill said: "The amount of nearly £75,000 for 2011/12 is not high when you consider that a large proportion of this is a legal requirement.
"Over £50,000 of it relates to council tax and benefits. We had to send out council tax bills and booklets to all residential properties within the borough, which was over 30,000."
Mr Hill said that, by law, reminders for missed payments and to those in arrears had to be sent in the post and by first class.
He added: "In terms of benefits, we send out statements and some cheques. The total cost of postage includes the cost of receiving and returning original documents such as birth certificates and passports.
"In addition to council tax and benefits, we also prepare a register of electors each year, which requires us to send a letter to each household within the borough."
The figures also show Tewkesbury Borough Council has managed to reduce some of its other stationery costs over the last three years.
The amount spent on printing, for example, went from £27,450 in 2009/10 to £16,405 in 20011/12. But more was spent on printer cartridges, rising from £1,256 to £1,549.
Comments
by tishwash
Friday, January 04 2013, 5:27PM
“@howitis the freedom of information act dictates that they may charge or decline requests that would cost over £450 to deal with, based upon a £25 an hour fee which is a total of 18 hours, so 1/2 a working week for 1 person. I doubt the council pay £25 an hour to their staff so I guess the cost probably isn't thousands unless they're dealing with a lot of requests, guess it would be nice to know how many requests they get a year, either way badger12's comment was still flippant and without any evidence.”
by howitis
Friday, January 04 2013, 9:08AM
“tishwash, Councils and other public bodies receive hundreds of freedom of information requests every year, all of which have to be responded to within a certain timescale.
Someone has to gather up all the information requested and send it to the person asking for it. Over the course of the year this will no doubt take up hundreds of hours of time depending on how complicated and detailed the information requested is.
Perhaps this paper could put in a freedom of information request to ask how many freedom of information requests it receives a year and how long on average it takes to respond to them (I love irony).
Whilst I accept that some freedom of information requests are made by journalists for very good reasons that are clearly in the public interest, but I fear far too many are made just to fill a few column inches with stories of little public interest or value, such as the story above.
I am sure far more taxpayers would be "shocked" if the council did not send them their council tax bill through the post or other such important correspondence. And whilst this newspaper claims that email has largely replaced the letter, I think there is a significant number of its readers who would disagree. There is still a significant percentage of older and vulnerable people who do not use the internet and do not have an email address.”
by tishwash
Thursday, January 03 2013, 8:56PM
“Costs the council thousands ? can you quantify this badger12 ?”
by badger12
Thursday, January 03 2013, 12:18PM
“howitis - this is a great comment. FOI requests cost the Council's thousands due to the amount of hours that go into meeting these requests - often for trivial matters (such as this).”
by howitis
Thursday, January 03 2013, 9:01AM
“I wonder how much it costs us local taxpayers for the Council to respond to Freedom of Information requests made by local newspapers just so they can run a non-story like this?”