CASH-STRAPPED Dorset County Council has run up a £25,000 unpaid phone bill on staff mobile phones.

Staff have been warned that they face being disconnected from the service if the bills are not paid.

A union leader has accused the council, which is currently bidding so save £39million over the next three years under its Meeting Future Challenges programme, of ‘poor management’ for allowing the bills to stack up.

The Dorset Echo has seen an email sent to staff at the council warning them that services could be disconnected if the outstanding bills are not paid.

The Echo has also seen a list of all the phones with late unpaid bills, which total £24,858.19 from 280 numbers.

One number alone is responsible for over £8,400, with the directorate responsible for the phone listed as ‘unknown’.

Another phone listed as being from an ‘unknown’ department has racked up a bill of over £2,500, while two numbers in the environment directorate have outstanding bills of over £1,000.

Gary Pattison, Dorset branch secretary for the GMB union said: “It looks to me like very poor management.

“Regardless of the Meeting Future Challenges programme and the need to save money there are areas that are not being monitored clearly and it is very difficult to see how anyone can build up a phone bill of £8,500 without that being monitored.

“If we are losing jobs and services £8,400 is a lot of money and £25,000 is somebody’s salary for a year.”

He added: “It would be wrong to pretend that some staff don’t need mobile phones and we don’t know with these huge ones who has been running up the bills but it’s very difficult at the same time to believe that there is anybody that could reasonably have needed to build up a phone bill like that.”

Staff informed and prompted to take action

DORSET County Council has claimed it is ‘actively managing’ the outstanding payments and is putting measures in place to stop it happening again.

Procurement manager Karen Andrews said: “We have been actively managing some outstanding mobile phone bills and are working with the phone company to process the payments immediately.

“We are resolving any outstanding payments and putting measures in place to stop this happening again.

“Some of the delays may be down to staff on annual leave, movement of staff between services or working in different locations.”

He added: “Staff have been informed and been prompted to take action