At a meeting of Full Council which took place on Wednesday 29 July 2026 the council was asked to provide receipts to evidence spend with a number of businesses.

There has been coverage in the media of this request and commentary on social media, so in the interests of transparency we are publishing the response to the resident from Councillor Mohammed Jamil, Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Governance.

Dear resident,

At the Full Council meeting held on 29 July you asked me to provide receipts for spend on council procurement cards in relation to a number of businesses.

Officers in our procurement team spent three full days working on this request before I asked them to pause given the time it was taking to compile the information that you had requested. This is already above the statutory cost limit applied to FOI requests.

To explain, you have asked to see well over 1,300 individual transactions. To complete this request, we would need to review the information for every transaction to ensure it is clear what the spend was for. We would also need to consider if any redactions were needed, given that one of the key uses of a P-card is to support children and young people who are in the council’s care.

The basis of your question was to seek reassurance that spend in the areas you listed was, to quote you "proper, lawful and represented value for money and necessary for council business". Therefore, I am providing you with the detail we have obtained so far in relation to some of the areas that you enquired about. Our records and those of GPC Card provider indicate that for 2024/25 the spend figures vary from those indicated in your request. I include the figures from these sources below.

Before I provide you with that detail, here is some information which will help you to understand why we spend with the businesses you have listed. This is broken down into two key areas as follows:

Children’s Services

As a corporate parent to around 430 children, the council has duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of the children it looks after. We also support care leavers as they move towards independence, including where they are moving into their own accommodation. To help you to understand the number of young people we are talking about here, 94 care leavers are currently being supported by the leaving care service as an open case who left care during 2024/25 and 90 during 2025/26.

In practical terms, support for care leavers may involve helping a young person obtain essential household items, furnishings, clothing, food, bedding or other items needed to set up and maintain a safe and suitable home. Every child leaving care is entitled to a £3,000 setting up home grant to fund these items.

Those young people who need our support do not have a parent to help them when they move into their first home on their own and that is why the council support is so critical. Expenditure at retailers such as Argos, B&M, Tesco or similar stores may therefore appear unusual to others when viewed only as a supplier name or transaction line, but such spending properly relates to meeting the council’s statutory duty to support children and young people for whom the council is acting as corporate parent, including helping care leavers make the transition into independent living. We would direct you to information available on the council’s website on the Care Leavers Local Offer and, in particular, the section on Your home (Care Leavers) | Peterborough City Council which details some of the support that a care leaver should expect from us.

Adult Social Care

Our Client Income Team, which manages the finances of individuals who lack mental capacity, has been issued with a P-card that is routinely used to purchase goods and services on behalf of individual clients from several of the providers listed. The P-cards are used as an administrative payment mechanism to enable the timely purchase of goods and services on behalf of these clients. Typical purchases include items such as beds, bedding, furniture, TVs, mobile phones, and other household goods. These suppliers are generally used because they offer good value for money and provide the types of items commonly required when individuals are setting up a new home, moving property, or replacing broken or worn-out possessions etc.

The key point to note is that while the cards are issued by the council, all associated expenditure is reimbursed from the individual clients' own funds which are managed by the Client Income Team on their behalf - this does not therefore represent council expenditure.

Spend data

The following is the data that we can provide to you to based on the information officers had collated across the three days of research and information gathering.

£132,000 on Amazon

Our figures show a spend of £113,767.86 across a total of 975 transactions, involving 36 cardholders. 

Amazon is used primarily for small value items that are needed quickly. An example of this is Clare Lodge which is a secure children's home operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with accommodation for up to 16 young people and over 100 staff. The service uses approved suppliers to support the care, education, health, safety and maintenance requirements of the service. Amazon is used to procure a range of items required for the safe operation of the home and to support the needs of young people in our care, including but not limited to:

Birthday gifts

Christmas gifts

Clothing and toiletries

Welcome gifts for new admissions

Activity items such as books, puzzles, craft materials and educational kits

Security equipment, including key retention items, belts and pouches

Screws, fixings and maintenance consumables

Replacement parts for equipment, such as vacuum cleaner filters and hoses

Fire-retardant bedding and sheets*

Towels and essential household items*

*These items are generally only purchased through Amazon when equivalent products are unavailable through other suppliers.

Medicine pots and syringes

Vitamins for young people

Controlled Drugs Register books

Denaturing kits for the safe disposal of medication

Curriculum resources and materials to support teaching and learning activities within the on-site school.

£160 on Pandora jewellery

There was no record of any spend in the year April 2024/April 2025. The only historical Pandora spend was £57.99 on 08/10/25 which was against an allowance for a young person's birthday, and £197.98 involving three young people on the following dates - 05/01/23, 27/11/23 and 15/12/23. These transactions relate to a ring which was purchased with Christmas gift allowance plus some of the young person’s saved pocket money and the other transactions were for items purchased with Christmas gift allowance. The young people concerned are looked after children.

£900 on fish and chips

This was paid to the Marigold Tavern for use of their venue as a polling station. Fish and Chips was shown on the statement, perhaps because they have a fish and chips takeaway service in the village.

This payment was paid via the PCard as the venue owners insisted that this was paid at the time of booking and would not wait for the details to be set up on the financial system. We, therefore, could not afford to lose a polling station venue, so paid via the PCard. Going forward the venue has now been set up on the financial payment system.

The cost of hiring venues for polling stations can vary dramatically in price ranging from £200 to £1,500 for polling day, which is a total of 16 hours from setting up to closing on the day.

£31,000 at Tesco with 62 spends in Tesco Serpentine Hampton with an average of £240 per spend

Our records show a spend of £16,807.45 across 97 transactions, involving six cardholders.

£42,000 with Argos

Our records show a spend of £24,727.75 across 126 transactions, involving 14 cardholders .

Based on information received to date, the purchase of white goods and homewares for care leavers funded by leaving care grants accounts for the majority of this spend.

£33,000 with Currys

Our records show a spend of £11,299.10 across 31 transactions involving 10 cardholders .

Based on information received to date, the purchase of white goods and small electrical items for housing needs or care leavers funded by leaving care grants accounts for the majority of this spend.

£2,400 with Asda

Our records show a spend of £6,336.47 across 50 transactions involving 12 cardholders.

Based on information received to date, groceries funded by leaving care grants, housing needs or for the House Project accounts (might be worth explaining what this is or linking to the House Project on website?) for the majority of this spend. You can read more about the House Project here Home | The House Project | Peterborough

£21,000 through PayPal

Our records show spend of £8,542.87 across 24 transactions involving four cardholders.

£160 on Sky subscriptions

Our records show spend of £597 across eight transactions, involving two cardholders.

£240 on eBay

Our records show spend of £199.38 across two transactions by two cardholders.

£3,100 on TV licenses

Our records show spend of £1,695 across ten transactions by five cardholders.

TV licences are required for all council buildings including Sand Martin House and the Town Hall. Residential homes will also require licences. Care leavers may also have licences funded from their care leavers grant.

£50 on Temu

The only transaction the council has made to Temu was on 06/07/2023 for £48.46 for clothing for a young person in care. 

It is also worth mentioning that for our annual staff awards, individual winners receive gift vouchers and teams are able to claim back the cost of a meal. This will include spend at Tesco and Morrison’s for the gift cards and spend at local restaurants. This spend is completely funded by sponsorship and does not cost the council a penny.

I hope this response goes some way to reassuring you that our spending in these instances is proper, lawful and represents value for money for taxpayers.

Our administration has stated publicly its commitment to being as transparent as possible with residents, working on the basis that we should have nothing to hide.

There is a legitimate public interest in transparency about the spending of public money, including expenditure made using P-Cards. However, there is also a strong public interest in ensuring the council uses its limited resources proportionately and continues to prioritise the delivery of statutory services and other core functions.

I hope the information I have provided gives you the reassurance that you are looking for.

Councillor Mohammed Jamil

Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Governance for Peterborough City Council

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