Highland Council is sending staff on an average of one foreign trip every fortnight while tens of millions of pounds is being slashed from services.
The Press and Journal can reveal that the budget-cutting local authority spent £25,000 jetting off on 50 overseas visits in the past two years.
The trips included a near £1,200 bill to send the Portree harbour master to Miami for 10 days and Hamburg for separate cruise shipping conferences within six months of each other last year.
An educational psychologist went on a £576 visit to Lisbon to learn about “lives and politics beyond the gender binary”, while the authority’s principal tourism and film officer made a £214 trip to a film conference in Barcelona.
A total of 20 of the journeys featured the council’s European officers, who racked up costs of more than £10,000 in the process, including a £690.64 trip to a conference in Crete, an £854.29 visit to Porto for a convention on mountains and a £464.92 visit to Florence.
Two senior officials and a lead councillor also spent £2,010 going on a day trip to Stockholm for a child protection conference, while development and infrastructure director Stuart Black spent £3,271 visiting New York, Cannes, Amsterdam and Brussels.
The figures also detail a £612.83 trip by the council’s principal engineer to a “Nearly Zero Energy” meeting in Oslo, while a graduate officer went to Tenerife for £128 for a conference on cruises to the Mediterranean, and 11 teachers were sent on French immersion courses at a cost of £3,500.
The spending covers a period from October 2014 to October 2016.
The council refused to provide details for expenses claims relating to food and subsistence on the trips, and said the figures represented “total costs”, although some entries appear to be for flights only.
The spending was revealed amid public anger at cutbacks to services, with £135million having already been slashed from spending since 2011, including £39million this year.
Local authority chiefs revealed plans this month to axe a further £24million in the coming year, including more than 120 job losses in departments such as street cleaning, grass cutting, the employability team and Ranger service.
Opposition SNP councillor Ken Gowans was “surprised” by the number of overseas trips.
“All travel, but particularly foreign travel, in these times must be for absolutely essential business, or there has to be a clear worth to the council,” he said.
“£25,000 for 50 trips might not seem like a lot but when you’re sending harbour masters to Miami, you have to wonder what the value is.
“It boils down to whether it’s essential and if there is a benefit to the council. If there isn’t, we shouldn’t be going on them.”
Douglas Ross, Conservative MSP for the Highlands and islands, said: “Every local authority in Scotland is faced with extremely difficult decisions as budgets are cut by the Scottish Government.
“Therefore, I find it incredible that so many officials from Highland Council should be allowed to take such expensive trips when I’m sure similar benefits could be achieved through video conferencing or by being updated by e-mail after an event.”
A Highland Council spokeswoman said: “Most of the European trips are where officers are accompanying and supporting members on EU business.
“The trip to the World Canals Conference in Ghent was because Inverness was hosting it this year.
“The cost of the trip to New York by the director of development and infrastructure was reimbursed by the Scottish Cities Alliance.”
No flights taken by Highland Council staff in the last two years were in first or business class sections.
However, another FoI request by the Press and Journal has revealed that there were 17 first-class rail journeys taken by local authority officials within Britain in the period, costing a total of £690.80.
