City spends £1.3m on staff phones

SCOTLAND'S councils have spent more than £14 million in the past three years giving mobile phones to more then 56,000 staff members and elected councillors, with nearly £1.3m spent in the Capital.

Edinburgh City Council said 6079 of their staff had been issued with mobile phones paid for by the council at a cost of 1,297,094.00 between 2008 and 2010.

In East Lothian, 38 per cent of the workforce is provided with a mobile phone - the highest percentage in the country - working out at 1192 out of 4700 employees and costing more than 400,000.

The figures, revealed under Freedom of Information legislation, show that almost one in every five of Scotland's 295,000 council workers have a handset paid for by their employers.

The bills include the cost of giving top of the range smartphones such as Blackberry handsets to staff.