ONE in four members of staff at Scottish Borders Council have now been supplied with laptop computers.

The number of the devices used by local authority employees has risen by around 50 per cent over the past three years.

A freedom of information (Fo1) response reveals that there were 682 laptops either registered to SBC staff or used by them in August 2010.

This number had risen to 947 in August last year and, since then, the total has reached 980.

These figures do not include schools and the council has declined to specify the costs involved.

But the move away from personal computers (PCs) was defended this week by a council spokesperson.

“The trend towards using laptops and away from PCs is due to the increase in flexible working patterns,” said the spokesperson.

“That requires the council to supply staff with laptops to enable them to hotdesk in our offices and work from home efficiently.

“Whilst the balance between numbers of PCs and laptops has changed, the overall number of computer devices has remained the same and no member of staff has both.”