The cash-strapped town hall forked out more than £850,000 for taxis last year, and more than £133,000 for drinks and nibbles for meetings since 2010.

As the hard-up council announced it must save £26m this year, the staggering spend emerged – equivalent to more than seven million tea bags and 429,000 packs of digestive biscuits – despite council leader Richard Watts claiming the “fat” had been “trimmed” off spending.

The whopping refreshment spend was revealed after a Freedom of Information request from the Gazette, and the figures show more than £859,000 was spent on taxis – an average of more than £70,000 a month since 2012.

Reported by the Islington Gazette. You can read the full story here.

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.