A UKIP parliamentary candidate has denied being on the EU gravy train despite accepting European cash for a constituency office and a visit to Brussels.

Jamie Huntman, the anti-EU party’s parliamentary candidate for Castle Point, has admitted using £20,000 of EU cash to run an office for the party’s European MPs at his business in Bowers Gifford.

Mr Huntman, who is Ukip’s leader on Essex County Council, has also admitted going on an EU-funded trip to Brussels with four other Ukip county councillors, worth £1,685.

He insists he received no money personally for setting up the office at his timber business, Two Four Five, in Pound Lane, despite declaring himself “constituency manager for the eastern region Ukip MEPs in Essex” on his county council register of interests, and claims he even had to stump up his own cash.

The timber merchant claims the visit to the Belgian capital only cemented his wish to leave the EU.

Mr Huntman said: “The absolute truth is I’m not on any EU gravy train.

“If you come to my business, you will see the office I built on my own land. It’s paid for by me, not by the EU.

“I put it on the register of members’ interest because I’m honest.

“There is money that we get from the EU region that goes through me.”

Ukip offered Mr Huntman £40,000 to set up the office, but the businessman offered to do it for half that.

The office employs one person, who meets people, such as members of lobby groups, and carries out work on behalf of Ukip’s three MEPs in the east of England.

Mr Huntman, who donates his allowance as leader of the county council’s Ukip group to the charity Help for Heroes, claimed the office was cheap compared to Castle Point MP Rebecca Harris’s parliamentary office, for which she claimed £142,000 in expenses in 2013-14.

He said: “I haven’t profited 1p out of this.

“It costs me far more than I ever get back.

“Rebecca Harris is claiming back £2.50 for teas and coffees for her volunteers from the taxpayer.”

Ukip leader Nigel Farage, who is an MEP for south east England, invited newly elected Ukip county councillors to visit him in Brussels, with funding from the EU.

Ukip county councillors Nigel Le Gresley, of Wickford Crouch, Keith Gibbs, of Rayleigh South, Andrew Erskine, of Tendring Rural East, and the late Gordon Helm, went on the trip, reporting the trip as worth £337 each on the authority’s register of hospitality and gifts.

Mr Huntman said county councillors needed to know about the EU, as its laws and regulations affect local authorities, but claimed the EU funded such trips to promote itself.

He said: “The EU gives money to take people like me to Brussels to show off. It wants us to come back and bang the drum for howwonderful it is.

“I came back with more passion to leave the EU than I went with.”