Haringey Borough Council spent more than £30,000 of taxpayer's money on overseas trips in the past five years, according to figures obtained in a Freedom of Information request.

The Haringey Independent submitted the FoI request after it was revealed last month that the authority had spent £9,000 in taxpayers money to attend the high profile MIPIM property convention in Cannes, France.

Figures obtained showed that the authority has paid £37,539 for a total of 80 international trips between 2009 and 2013.

Destinations included Turkey, Romania, Brazil, Jamaica, Ghana, New York, New Zealand and South Africa.

However, 32 of those trips incurred no travel costs to the council.

The most visited location was the USA, with eleven visits, with a combined travel cost of £13,166.

Two trips to the USA, one costing £4,508 were for overseas recruitment and involved one HR employee and one children and young person's service manager.

The number of work-related overseas trips has fallen from 26 in 2011 to 13 in 2012 and just five in 2013.

There were ten court-directed kinship assessments and 25 trips were completely funded by the British Council as part of the Community Cohesion Project.

The council's figures originally showed that it had paid £19,757 for a trip to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, in July 2010, for an overseas cultural exchange visit by Haringey Young Musicians.

The authority later corrected this, saying the trip was funded by parental contributions, external grants and fundraising - there was no cost to the taxpayer.