As you may have heard, MCFly finally got its hands on some dirt… sorry, data on the council’s flying habit. In a recent post, we asked our readers to guess the bill the council racked up offsetting the elected members flights from the end of 2009 to November 2011. The answer? Well, we can reveal it was … a measly £10.*

This princely sum was paid for a flight to Copenhagen in December 2009 – no doubt covering the leader of the council’s trip to the climate summit to showcase Manchester’s climate change plans. The council paid the £10 offset to the now-defunct Foundation Climate Fund for the North West.

In 2010, there were a total of 10 return flights taken, and 7 flights in 2011. Whilst some seem justifiable considering the distance (eg. Shanghai, Sao Paulo, and Auckland), others are just plain do-able via train. For example, a flight was taken to Southampton, Dublin, Brussels and Paris. The number of return flights taken by members of the Strategic Management Team at the council in 2010 were 6: two to Brussels, two to Nice and one to Toronto and Dubai. Flights in 2011 were particularly bad in terms of locations. Although there were only four return flights, they were to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin and Nice.

According to the council, there are currently no formal requirement to offset air travel although “flights are only taken where they are the most appropriate form of transport.” They also added that there isn’t any mechanism to store data on who has offset unless it was raised at the time of booking.

*Technically, your guess is as good as anyones because as the council has explained, they do not hold information on offsetting and there is not formal requirement to offset. Saying that, I can’t imagine council members a) voluntarily offsetting and than b) not telling anyone about it.

Arwa Aburawa
mcmonthly@gmail.com

[And before anyone asks – no, I did not offset my flight from Adelaide (visiting parents) to Shanghai. But the extra cost (and the carbon savings) of taking the train the rest of the way back to Manchester salved my conscience a bit. The money I’m sinking into MCMonthly’s printing costs etc is considerably more than the Council (budget in the region of a billion quid) has spent on off-setting.
Marc Hudson, not defensive about having flown in any way shape or form at all (cough cough).]