WEST Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) has said its £16,000 expenditure to host the Queen’s Baton Relay (QBR) was “excellent value for money”.

The statement comes after an independent investigation found Scottish councils spent more than £1.7 million on events associated with the relay.

But that was money well spent according to the local authority, which added the event would “live in people’s memories for a long time to come”.

After visiting all 70 Commonwealth nations, the relay culminated in a 40-day tour of Scotland before the start of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Figures released showed WDC spent a total of £15,458.18 on the relay, the majority of which was spent on the celebration event at Clydebank’s Three Queen’s Square after the baton had passed through the area.

The event on July 18 cost the local authority £8,527. The second largest chunk of the money, £2,377.25 was spent on food at town halls across the region.

A WDC spokeswoman told the Reporter: “The QBR was a fantastic day for West Dunbartonshire and excellent value for money as it provided the council and its partners with an unprecedented opportunity to showcase the area’s beauty and tourist attractions to a wide national audience.

“The event was extensively covered by national media such as BBC Online, BBC Reporting Scotland, the Herald and Evening Times and local media including the Reporter.

“In addition, it was a great day for the local community with thousands of residents lining the streets along the route, and more than 2,000 people attending the QBR celebration event in the Three Queen’s Square in Clydebank.

“It was a hugely successful day that will live in people’s memories for a long time to come.” However, an expenditure like that is an unwarranted extravagance according to one councillor.

Socialist councillor, Jim Bollan did not believe £1.7 million for the “Monarch’s baton relay” across the country, nor the “£523 million” shelled out on the games themselves was money well spent.

He told the Reporter: “This could have been put to better use in Scotland, which now has around 800 food banks for families who are too poor to feed themselves and their children.

“One million children also live in poverty in Scotland, a legacy of the Better Together Union we live in. These huge amounts of public money could have been better spent on projects that tackle inequality and the lack of social justice in Scotland.” But that is not an opinion shared with the local authority who defended their expenditure, saying the feel good factor alone was worth it.

A sixth of the total cost – £2,600 – was spent on securing video footage and still photographs by the council, with some of these earmarked for PR use.

Just £702 was spent on staffing at town halls, with a further £944 shelled out for staffing of the Three Queen’s Square event. More than £300 was spent on snack bags.

The data was obtained through a series of coordinated Freedom of Information requests.

That showed the biggest spending local authorities to be Glasgow, North Ayrshire, and Perth and Kinross councils, with the main costs across the board being entertainment, traffic management, and publicity.

Glasgow City Council, which hosted the 2014 games, contributed £500,000 towards the cost of staging the baton’s four-day tour of the city.

North Ayrshire Council spent £150,007 and Perth and Kinross £112,373 – both spent more than Edinburgh council, despite representing a population a third the size of Scotland’s capital city.