BUCKINGHAMSHIRE council has spent nearly £6,000 on coronation celebrations, figures show.

The final figure comes after a report by the openDemocracy website found that Buckinghamshire Council was one of the 26 across the UK which responded to requests for information on how much they spent.

Of 382 councils in the UK that openDemocracy contacted, 289 provided a response to the publication.

Leader of Buckinghamshire Council Martin Tett explained how the funds were distributed across the bank holiday weekend. 

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The council waived the fees for street closures paying for the costs themselves to encourage local residents to run their own local events.

As well as this, the council paid for the Old County Offices in Aylesbury and the Guildhall in High Wycombe to be lit in red, white and blue on the evening of the coronation, ran a Design a Crown competition involving local schools, created an archives exhibition which is touring libraries across the county and raised the coronation flag at five of the council offices.

Martin said: "Like all communities, we were excited to join in the celebrations to mark the historic coronation of King Charles III earlier this month. Knowing that many people wished to host events and street parties we decided to waive the fees for street closures, absorbing these costs ourselves, in order to encourage as many people as possible to run their own local events.

"Mindful of the fact that many people are still finding it difficult to manage with continued cost of living pressures and as a responsible local authority with our own need to balance budgets, our efforts to celebrate the coronation were deliberately planned in this way.

"Had we spent many thousands of pounds for the occasion we would no doubt have been hugely criticised for ‘wasting’ money.

"Instead we chose to mark the occasion as a council in variety of ways and encouraged and supported our residents to celebrate in their own local communities, in the same way that coronations have been celebrated traditionally in the past."