Cumbria’s Town Hall Fat Cats – thecumbriachronic.co.uk

CRUMBRIA: 30.3.2026

CRUMBERLAND Council has put nearly £1 million on “purchase cards”, the Chronic can reveal.

A total of £923,461 (inc VAT) was spent across 12,363 separate card transactions between April 2025 and February this year.

Spending this month would only need to reach £76,538 to push that figure over the £1m mark – below the Council’s average monthly card spend of £83,951.

The Labour-run authority says purchase cards can be used for “emergency ad-hoc purchases when a Council service user is in crisis”.

There appears to have been a great deal of those.

***

The figures show that the Council spent £44,291 with Northern Rail and a further £25,146 with Trainline.

That comes to nearly £70,000 on train travel alone.

It’s not just trains. The Council also spent £70,892 with the DVLA – enough to cover the tax for roughly 354 standard vehicles.

Or 2,085 driving licences or 834 driving tests.

Staying on four wheels, the Council also got the card out to pay around £700 in parking penalties. One parking overstay alone cost £210.

The spending didn’t stop there.

***

ACCOMMODATION

More than 320 transactions were made with just five accommodation suppliers alone. (Above).

There were 155 transactions at Travelodge, 98 at Booking.Com; 46 at Premier Inn, 17 at the Waverley, Workington; and 7 at Hotel Ibis.

In total, the Council used cards to pay £111,888 across 65 accommodation suppliers.

Other stays were logged at the Holiday Inn; the North Lakes Hotel, Penrith; the Trout Hotel, Cockermouth; and Allerdale Court Hotel, Cockermouth.

Stays also took place at the Castle Green Hotel, Kendal; Skiddaw Hotel, Keswick; The George Hotel, Keswick; The Swan Hotel & Spa, Windermere; and The Chase Hotel, Whitehaven, among others.

The corporate cards have had a busy year on tour.

***

SHOPPING

The Council is not shy about getting the plastic out in the shops either.

Here are the top five retail outlets where Council purchase cards were used. The figure in brackets is the number of transactions made with the store.

A further 138 smaller transactions, amounting to nearly £1,000, were made at places such as the Co-op (£617); Spar (£304) and Nisa (£42.)

Who said capitalism is dead?

***

TAKEAWAYS & FAST FOOD

When Council service users are in a crisis, Maccie D’s seems to be a regular port of call.

The Council’s cards were used to spend nearly £2,000 at different McDonald’s restaurants – the equivalent of more than 500 ‘Happy Meals’.

Here are the top three food and cafe outlets where the most money was spent on the Council’s purchase cards.

***

Purchase cards were also used to spend on Amazon.

An eye-popping £84,439 was paid out by the Council across more than 1,000 Amazon purchases.

That sum needs to be added to the £55,349 we told you about in Sunday’s story.

Taken together, the Council’s spending with Amazon — including shopping, Prime, business and digital services — comes to nearly £139,789.

Other eye-catching entries in the Council’s card data include £5,199 spent with HM Passport Office.

There were 64 transactions with the Passport Office with an average value of £81.

All of the figures suggest that the Council now operates somewhere between a retail park, a Travelodge, a drive-thru and a Passport application service

But for whose benefit?

STORY ENDS