Questions have been raised the about the number of short car trips being made by council staff from Norfolk County Hall and the total bill of parking in Norwich. Opposition Liberal Democrats at Norfolk County Council tabled a question about the number of staff trips of less than six miles to and from County Hall and details of the total costs of parking claims in the city.

But Cliff Jordan, cabinet member for efficiency said pinning down an exact answer would be too costly as the authority processes more than 1,500 mileage claim forms a month including car parking and multiple journeys were claimed on one form.

'It would be difficult to provide accurate information regarding mileage claims and car parking costs made by employees, without HR staff having to manually go through some 18,000 individual paper forms with multiple journeys for the last financial year, which would require a significant amount of resource,' Mr Jordan said. 'We undertook a sample of 600 claim forms relating to travel last month and this showed that only four people made claims of less than three miles each way.'

Lib Dem Mervyn Scutter, said: 'What your answer suggests is that these budgets aren't well managed or managed in detail. I would really like a full answer which gives some indication of how it's managed.'