Somerset Council officers have been branded "dodgy" for accepting a dinner from a consultancy firm which is working closely with the council.
Every six months, the council publishes its updated gifts and hospitality register, providing a list of all items worth £25 or more which have been either gifted directly to officers or provided as part of wider hospitality.
Gifts within the last six months have ranged from invitations to award ceremonies and overnight accommodation to John Lewis gift cards and bottles of wine - though not all the gifts offered were accepted.
Alan Hemsley, a co-opted member of the council's standards committee (i.e. not a sitting councillor), used a public meeting on July 23 to criticise the acceptance of gifts - though he clarified that he did believe any crime had been committed.
Councillor Bente Height (Shepton Mallet, Reform UK) used the same meeting to call for more information to be provided to the public about gifts and hospitality, warning the public would otherwise "think this smelled a little bit".
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Unlike the councillors' list of gifts and hospitality declared, the officers' list does not name the individuals who accepted the gifts - only the council department in which they are employed.
The gifts accepted in the last six months include a £40 dinner with representatives of Newton Europe (which is leading the ongoing transformation programme), £130 for a "group invite" to the Yunex traffic signals event in Bristol and £285 worth of tickets to the National Annual Scrutiny and Governance Conference.
Officers also accepted in invitation to the the Civil Engineering Contractors Association's annual dinner and awards held in Cardiff in March, along with overnight hotel accommodation - the disclosure of which revealed that Centregreat would be carrying out the upcoming improvements to the Edithmead roundabout in Highbridge.
Several gifts were declined by officers - including wine, calendars and assorted gifts from highways contractor Walters UK, which was refused since their contract was shortly up for renewal.
Mr Hemsley took issue with these gifts - though he did not single out any individual officer.
He said: "The Newton Europe declaration appears to be an officer taking a dinner from a company that is employed by the council. That is dodgy in my books.
"Regarding the Centregreat gifts, I have great difficulty in accepting that three officers should be having a dinner paid for by contractors that has done work with the council and are probably going to do more work with the council.
"The whole thing is looking, to somebody out there, like officers are taking money from prospective or existing contractors. That's what it looks like to the public.
"I don't say they are, by any stretch of the imagination, but officers need to be aware of what people outside of the council are thinking."
Scott Wooldridge, the council's head of governance and democratic services, said that the council was "being more transparent than many of its peers" in publishing these gifts and hospitality, including those which had been turned down.
Regarding the Centregreat gifts, he added: "If you are outside of the county, undertaking work on behalf of the council, you are allowed to claim within an allowance period for an evening meal and lunch.
"This appears to be a conference hosted by a particular organisation, where this limited company appears to have provided the accommodation and food associated with that conference."
Ms Height said that the council should do more to reassure the public that officers were accepting gifts in good faith and were not being swayed in their decisions.
She said: "If I was a member of the general public and not a councillor, I would think that it smelled a little bit, to be quite honest.
"We should put something that could be sent out to the public so they know we are not dodgy here."
A further report on these issues will be discussed at the committee's next meeting in October.
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