Doncaster - Council Worker’S Gambling Texts Phone Scandal

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http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/council_worker_s_gambling_texts_phone_scandal_1_3068369

GAMBLING text alerts helped a council worker run up a £2,678 mobile phone bill – paid for by the taxpayer.

Doncaster Council says it is now trying to recover the money and is also currently investigating a second bill of £1,938 run up in the same quarter, between July and September last year.

The member of staff from the trading standards department who ran up the largest bill has since left the authority – and the council says they would have been sacked if they had not already gone.

The phone had received 1,800 premium rate text alerts, costing £1.27 each.

The second phone which is under investigation was a pool phone, which was used by a number of staff in the children’s services department.

The council, which is currently trying to make £73 million worth of spending cuts over the next four years, said the misuse of the phone was discovered during routine checks.

A spokesman said the authority was now carrying out a large-scale review of phone usage across the authority.

Last month, The Star revealed some councillors had run up bills of more than £1,000 between May 2009 and September 2010.

Those who ran up the highest of the bills, Coun Sue Phillips and Coun Jonathan Wood, defended themselves and said all the calls were related to council business.

Just what council business where they doing to run up bills of £1000 plus, surely there are some good deals out there which would reduce the bill?

Nice to see they've got good auditing in place to get £1+ txt messages flagged up.