A ROW over unspent council cash has broken out after more than £5,200 was returned to the town hall coffers.

Each of Colchester’s 51 councillors are allocated a £2,000 locality budget which they are entitled to use during the financial year on small projects in the community.

But figures obtained by the Gazette show three councillors - Conservatives John Elliott, Derek Loveland and Fiona Maclean - opted not to spend all or part of their allocation.

The unspent £5,239.23 has been recouped by Colchester Council and used to balance overspends in other areas of the authority.

Tim Young, leader of the authority’s Labour group, said: “It is a real shame because it is money set aside to help councillors’ own communities and £5,000 is a lot of money which could have gone to good causes.

“All the Labour councillors spent their allocation as did the Lib Dems and the Highwoods group.

“But here are three councillors who either didn’t bother or forgot to spend money in the community which could have helped small projects.”

It is understood no requests were made to carry forward the money, which was allocated in 2016/17, into 2017/18.

The figures show John Elliott had carried over £239.23 from 2015/16 into 2016/17 but his £2,239.23 total went unspent last year.

Fellow Tiptree councillor Derek Loveland handed back £1,000 while Stanway’s Fiona Maclean appears not to have spent any of her £2,000 allocation.

Mr Loveland said while he would have liked to spend all of his allocation, there are too few community groups in the village and even fewer groups which are happy to go through a grant application process.

Neither Mr Elliott nor Ms Maclean could be reached for comment yesterday but Conservative group leader Dennis Willetts said there is no policy on each councillor having to spend all of their locality fund.

He said: “I do believe £120,000 [the overall locality budget] could probably be spent in other ways.

“My concern is that some of the money could end up being spent on projects which are not absolutely necessary in the financially stringent times.”

He added: “I cannot speak for the three councillors except to say if they haven’t spent a penny of it, I would probably be asking one or two pertinent questions. That said, I am firmly of the opinion the locality budget money should not be given away.”

According to Colchester Council, the money is meant to be used to “initiate new projects or to provide additional funding to match already committed resources”.

The cash can be used to fund projects within a councillor’s ward or for projects outside of the ward which attract people from within their ward.