DEVON County Council is in the dark as to what it spends on corporate entertainment.

And it has amazed councillors in Chudleigh that the county has no idea what it shells out on hospitality.

It follows attempts by Chudleigh Town Council to find out how much of council taxpayers money was spent on a pre-Christmas pub bash entertaining town and parish councillors.

The matter was raised in January by the chairman of the town council's footpaths committee, Cllr Geoff Day, who had received an invitation to the event, and wanted to know the cost.

Back came the reply at the council's February meeting that the county council maintained that to extract the information would cost £450 and it was therefore not obliged to supply the answer.

Not content, the town council asked its county representative Cllr Jeremy Brook to take up the matter.

He tabled a question at the county's budget meeting on February 16, asking that in view of the financial pressures on the budget, how much was the council spending in corporate entertainment?

In his reply the leader of the council, Cllr Brian Greenslade said there was no specific county council budget for corporate entertainment though, from time to time, modest entertainment was provided from various sources such as the chairman's fund.

'As the above demonstrates, your request for the amount of money spent by the DCC on hospitality is not straightforward to determine.

'Firstly, this would require a specific definition of what constitutes "hospitality".

'For example a consultant may be engaged to carry out a specific piece of work for the county and travel and accommodation expenses might be paid. Such expenses might be construed as "hospitality", but would be accounted for within the general expense of hiring the consultant.

'The DCC has no specific budget lines identifying purely "hospitality" and so we are unable to identify such expenses easily,' he said.

Cllr Greenwood continued that to comply with the request would entail contacting every budget holder within the organisation and carrying out a manual search through accounts for the years requested.

It would then require collation into a form that could be released.

'The amount of work involved would depend upon the definition of hospitality, but the first estimate would be in the region of two-three weeks, or between 75-110 man hours,' he said.

Cllr Greenwood said at £25 per hour this equated to £1,875-£2,750, which was clearly in excess of the £450 limit.

At Monday's town council meeting Cllr Steve Evans said the county council clearly did not know how much it spent on hospitality and furthermore did not know what hospitality is.

Cllr Brook had informed the town council that he was not satisfied with the reply and that he was willing to take the matter further if desired.

Town councillors gave him their backing to do just that.