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Council rapped for £76,000 water bill
LEEDS City Council spent £76,600 on bottled water in the last financial year, new figures show.
The sum, revealed after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, comes despite the council announcing that it had SAVED more than 30,000 on bottled water in the first three months of this year.
The figure means that almost 300 was spent on water every day.
Campaigner Richard Taylor, who brought the figure to the attention of the YEP, said: "The country can't afford this public sector extravagance and lunacy. It has to stop. They need to start using the taps."
In March, the YEP reported that the council saved 30,000 on bottled water by removing water coolers.
Without these savings, the council would have spent more than 100,000 during the last financial year, compared to the 53,343 spent by Birmingham City Council and the 10,626 spent by Edinburgh Council in 2008.
Asda sells a 15-litre bottle of water for 5.37. Leeds City Council could have bought 14,264 of them, 6.48 litres for each of the council's 33,000 staff.
A Leeds City Council spokesman said: "Providing good-quality drinking water for staff and visitors to our buildings is not a perk – it is a very basic requirement of any decent and responsible organisation and we do not intend to change this.
"We are keen to provide value for council taxpayers' money. In 2008/9 we spent 76,600 on bottled water. This compares with 100,189 in 2006/7. We are hoping to reduce this by a further 30,000 over the coming year.
"The bulk of this expenditure will have been for water in water coolers in offices and public areas, rather than individual bottles.
"We have been providing more drinking water taps in buildings and are replacing bottled water coolers with plumbed-in supplies wherever possible. We are currently in the final stages of a tender exercise which will provide us with better value, plumbed-in water coolers."
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