After 19 months in post, Mayor David Skaith has travelled around the country meeting ministers and business leaders to bang the drum for York and North Yorkshire.

During that time, he has travelled to London on multiple occasions and Edinburgh by train and stayed in hotels at taxpayers’ expense.

However, should you have wished to have taken a look at how much any of those hotels, train tickets or mileage cost, you would have been left wanting.

That’s because Mayor Skaith had not published any of his personal expenses since he was elected in May 2024.

Yet, strangely, his deputy mayor for policing, Jo Coles, is legally required to publish her expenses.

The Stray Ferret first asked York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority for the mayor’s claims in August this year.

At the time, we pointed out to the combined authority that there were no sign of the mayor’s expenses — or any other transparency information from his office for that matter —on its website.

A spokesperson for the authority told us that although it was not a legal requirement for it to publish the mayor’s expenses, it was “planning to start publishing” the information soon. 

Four months later, there were still no sign of the information.

The Stray Ferret requested from the combined authority the latest figures on Mayor Skaith’s expenses, an explanation for why there were still no information on his claims and when it will start to make them public.

In response, we received a list of the mayor’s expenses — but only for the period from May 2024 to January 2025.

The information revealed that Mayor Skaith spent £618.30 on two hotel rooms in London for himself and an officer to meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer after the General Election.

It also detailed expenditure on a hotels in Edinburgh for a government meeting and London again for a trip to the to the International Investment Summit.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There still remains questions over his expenses for this year, which have yet to be published.

We have also asked further questions over a claim on September 23, where Mayor's Skaith's political advisor claimed £639.20 for a hotel in Liverpool. 

A combined authority spokesperson said it was "standard practice" for the combined authority to pay for accommodation for members of staff "fulfilling their role".

But, the point of the investigation was not just the sums involved. It was that the mayor had revealed little of his transparency data in 19 months — something which one former mayoral candidate described as “a dereliction of duty”.

A spokesperson for the mayor told us during our reporting that Mayor Skaith took transparency very seriously and pledged to publish all his expenses and other data in the new year.

As is the case with all our investigations into public money, we are driven by the public’s right to know how they taxes are used and whether they are spent with value for money in mind.

Without putting pressure on the combined authority to answer questions over the mayor’s expenses, who knows when they would have been revealed.