DUST mats at council-run buildings have cost the taxpayer more than £20,000 over five years.
Hundreds of pounds have been spent on each individual mat, which have been placed at entrances at Reigate and Banstead Borough Council help shops in Merstham, Banstead, Horley and Redhill, and at the town hall in Reigate, every year.
The council spent £20,824.86 between 2007 and 2011, the last full year for which figures are available. The mats can be bought and maintained elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.
At the Redhill help shop, there is one dust mat. The Mirror found similar mats for sale for well under £100, which are guaranteed for up to eight years.
However, the figures reveal the council spent more than £2,100 on the Cromwell Road shop's one mat between 2007 and 2011 – £513.99 in 2007, a further £565.39 in 2008, £320 in 2009, £337.33 in 2010 and £363.72 in 2011. Each transaction is for the following financial year.
The council declined to provide any comment about the spending and also refused to allow the Mirror to photograph any of their mats.
Specialist company Ideal Mats said they could provide a similar mat to the one in the help shop for £60, which could be cleaned cheaply at a launderette every few months and would be guaranteed for eight years.
Jacqui Munn, who set up the company, told the Mirror that some organisations spend "crazy" amounts on rental and cleaning contracts for their mats, rather than buying them outright.
"A lot of the time it is because nobody can really be bothered to look at an alternative," she said.
"It is an awful lot of money, but it's not really an exciting topic people can be bothered with – until someone looks at the bigger picture and looks at how it adds up over a number of years.
"These people are paying vast quantities of money when they don't need to."
The boss of another mats retailer, who asked to remain anonymous, was horrified about the amount of taxpayer money spent on mats, branding the figures "outrageous".
He said: "If they were running it as a business, and it was their own money, they would not spend that much on mats."
The town hall keeps high standards when it comes to dust mats too.
The figures show the council forked out £3,743.19 in 2007; £4,117.54 for "13 dust mats" in 2008; £2,910.00 in 2009; £1738.64 in 2010; and £2,078.80 for "9 dust mats" in 2011.
However, the shoes of people coming and going from the Castlefield Road headquarters will not be quite so well looked after next year, when the council thinks it can slash £800 from its budget by reducing the use of the mats at the site.
The £20,000 figure includes all items listed as "dust mats" obtained by the Mirror using the Freedom of Information Act.
Our request for information also turned up results entitled "dust mats and sani bins" and "sanitary disposal and dust mats" which accounted for an extra £2,347 of spending between 2007 and 2011.