Welsh civil servant failure to fill up hire cars costs £23k - Car Rental News
Welsh civil servant failure to fill up hire cars costs £23k
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Car Rental News - 30/08/2010
Civil servants in Wales squandered thousands of pounds by failing to tank up.
Refueling costs of £23,000 were levied against the Welsh government last year, thanks to the failure of civil servants to fill up hire cars before returning them. The needless cost comes on top of bills for millions of pounds run up by Welsh government staff hiring cars over the last few years. The service charges incurred for failing to refill hire cars were more than £2,000 higher than it cost in 2008 and more than twice the charges run up in 2004, when civil servants rang up £10,732 in refuelling costs.
The Welsh Liberal Democrats say the Welsh Assembly Government finally cut the costs spent on hire cars by almost half, after pressure from the party. In 2008, the Welsh government spent more than a million pounds on hire cars. That figure fell to just over £650,000 in 2009. In June last year, Liberal Democrat Assembly Members complained about the fact that the government spent £5 million on hire cars over five years.
The Lib Dem part spokesperson for transport in the Assembly said she was glad the Welsh Government had been able to manage its spending. Jenny Randerson questioned whether anything would have been done about the high bills had the Liberal Democrats not raised the issue. A spokesman for Dame Gill Morgan, the Permanent Secretary, said the public figures showed that the cost for hire cars used by officials in the Assembly Government had dropped by 64 per cent from 2008 to 2009 and that much of this reduction took place before the publicity of last summer.
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