Taking care of the pennies...

Every time there is a council meeting, agendas and other papers are printed and sent out to councillors. These often come to hundreds of pages. So the combination of print and postage costs are pretty heavy.

Today a scrutiny committee was discussing the 'Corporate Asset Management Plan'. The plan was included as a printed appendix in the papers.

At the meeting, an officer handed round new colour copies of the plan - apparently on the basis that there had been a slight change compared to the original.

When I questioned the use of resources, the officer in charge said that the £50 or £60 wasted was small change compared to the overall amount spent on Cornwall Council's buildings.

Of course he is right. But if the council can't take steps to avoid small amounts of waste like this, how can we hope that it can take care of the bigger amounts too?

With so many councillors now using tablets and laptops to work, there has got to be a change of attitude in the council to stop printing so many papers (and also to write shorter reports in the first place!)

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