Cost-cutting councils have spent up to £1 million on extravagant competition prizes including for tenants who paid their rent on time and children who eat school dinners.
A Sunday Post investigation has found holidays, hi-tech gadgets, shopping vouchers and cash have all been gifted to lucky recipients taking part in surveys, free draws, and crosswords.
Residents with the best gardens and council tax payers who signed up for direct debit schemes have also walked off with prizes akin to those on TV game shows.
Some local authorities even used public funds to entice their own employees with gifts or days off work as a reward for taking part in internal questionnaires.
Despite savage budget cuts that saw vital services axed last year, one council used £36,000 to run a raffle while another shelled out £1,000 on a nine-day sailing experience for a competition winner.
Pantomime tickets, iPads, tennis sets, televisions, scooters, flights to Europe, champagne and cinema passes have also been up for grabs around the country since 2010.
The revelations which have emerged under Freedom of Information come as Scotland’s 32 councils prepare to unveil another expected raft of annual cuts to balance their books.
Tory MSP Cameron Buchanan, the party’s local government spokesman, has described the spending spree on prizes as “clearly wrong”.
He said: “It’s remarkable that councils, many of which are always complaining about being hard up for money, are still finding room in their budget for this kind of thing.
“Incentivisation is all very well but that shouldn’t go beyond the proverbial box of chocolates. It would appear people are being rewarded for behaving in the normal way, like paying council tax and rent on time. That is clearly wrong.”
Documents reveal North Lanarkshire council which agreed cutbacks worth £62 million last year had the biggest giveaway with almost £100,000 spent on prizes.
A total of £38,500 was taken up on a weekly prize draw in which shoppers who spent more than £5 on Wishaw Main Street were entered into a raffle to win £100 of vouchers.
The same council bought 168 tennis racket sets, 140 skateboards, 270 scooters, and hundreds of cinema tickets as well as an iPad for every high school for a competition to encourage the uptake of school meals.
Officials also used £4,000 of public funds to run a prize draw for council tax payers who paid by direct debit.
In neighbouring South Lanarkshire, tenants in arrears with their rent were enticed to clear their debts and pay on time by the chance of winning £200 in cash in a year-long marketing drive. Residents who joined the council’s direct debit scheme were also entered into a draw to have their council tax paid for the year, with £14,627 spent since 2010.
Hundreds of hi-tech gadgets, including Kindles, games consoles, iPads, televisions and e-readers, were given away, while residents in Perth and Kinross were handed the opportunity to win an overnight break or a £250 donation to a charity of their choice.
Garden competitions were popular across the country, with Renfrewshire council handing out £7,425 in prizes to green-fingered winners while Clackmannanshire council opted to spend £4,000 on their contests.
Ten return flights to Germany, Malta and London have been given away by the City of Edinburgh council as part of trade fairs held in the capital since 2010, while officials have also handed out panda soft toys, mini iPads, iTunes gift cards, book tokens, and shopping vouchers as prizes.
Edinburgh council staff were offered the chance to win £50 High Street vouchers if they took part in a survey entitled “Why I Love Working in Social Care”.
Workers in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Fife, and the Scottish Borders benefited from similar schemes, while East Renfrewshire gave employees the chance to win a day’s leave for creating a new council motto.
In Argyll and Bute, where shopping vouchers and champagne were among the prizes offered, officials shelled out £1,000 on a competition to win a luxury sailing training experience on a Tall Ship. The nine-day voyage sailed from Greenock to Lerwick in July 2011.
As part of its £14,000 spend since 2010, East Lothian council gave away £1,000 in cash for the best-dressed shop windows during the 2013 Open Championship held at the Muirfield course in Gullane, and £6,000 of shopping vouchers.
Among the less glamorous prizes offered across Scotland were pairs of socks, bottles of water, £4 Duke of Edinburgh mugs, his and hers umbrellas, and T-shirts emblazoned with council logos. Many local authorities did secure private funding for competitions, with West Dunbartonshire offering golf memberships, spa days at the five-star Cameron House hotel, tickets for Rangers matches and passes for X Factor Live at no cost to the taxpayer.
But Eben Wilson, director of TaxpayerScotland, described the prizes as “fripperies” and insisted the spend by councils was a “real smack in the face for hard-working families”.
He added: “It’s galling that our local councils still have not understood that families expect their council tax to be used for services alone within a strong ethic of duty and public service with a canny use of taxpayer funds.
“To see our taxes being spent in this way echoes a change to a corporate culture in which our money is spread around like bankers’ bonuses,” Mr Wilson went on.
“We cannot have these hard-earned resources, aimed at collectively funded services, frittered away on baubles and trinkets.”
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