SOUTHAMPTON council chiefs have been accused of taking a “jolly” to one of Europe’s top cultural cities at a cost £4,260 to the taxpayer.

The “study tour” to Porto, on the coast of Portugal, has been slammed as excessive by taxpayer campaign groups.

The South East England Development Agency (Seeda) splashed out £41,401 to train senior officers and councillors from Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton on better urban design through foreign trips and three half-day workshops with university and industry experts.

It said its Places from Spaces programme was intended to give civic decision-makers a better awareness of the value of quality public space and provide inspiration and good ideas for them to draw on.

Seeda laid on visits to Porto and Copenhagen, in Denmark, for 47 council chiefs, costing £20,039, or £426 each. Nine officers and a councillor from Southampton went to Porto, where they stayed two nights in a three-star hotel, the Quality Inn, at 55 euros per person per night.

Susie Squires, campaigns manger for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “We are in a recession and it’s not the time for council employees to go on jollies.

“There are great examples around the UK of effective use of urban spaces.

There is no need for them to go jet-setting around Europe.

“There is no reason any additional factfinding could not have been done by free email.”

She added that most residents would not be able to go on holiday this year.

Southampton’s Tory Cabinet member for economic development Councillor Royston Smith also questioned the value of the trip.

He said: “The council, for whatever reason, took someone to look at the [Porto] schemes who had no decision-making powers, and I have had no feedback from the opposition councillor that went.”

Lib Dem councillor Liz Mizon, who went on the Porto tour called it a “mind-blowing experience”

and insisted “we worked jolly hard”.

Cllr Mizon, Southampton’s sherrif, said such occasional trips were needed if councillors were to be better educated and come up with ideas.

“If you see it for yourself it has much more impact,” she said.

Other Southampton councillors, including former council leader Adrian Vinson, had signed up for the trips but were voted out of office before they could take them.

A spokesman for Seeda insisted the trips were “extremely good value for money”, as Porto was acknowledged as European leader in “best practice” in its use of public space, while Copenhagen was acknowledged as a world leader.

“There was no substitute for taking people out there,” he said. The Places from Spaces project will also see the transformation of Queen’s Park in Southampton as an example of the kind of improvements that could be achieved in public spaces. More than 20 students from Southampton University worked with the city council.