I'm seeking to identify for our programmers a script that can be used
with our online database to manage reciprical links. An example of
this is available on the site link:
http://madrid.ratestogo.com/common/sitegen/cityclone/hc/leForm.asp
http://madrid.ratestogo.com 
The system would ideally give the administrator mamnagement control to
publish the links into a directory, controlling unwanted content and
building up a community with whom we can communicate.

We have set a budget of $250 or our programmers will build it
themselves as we require this urgently - i noticed a site called
www.w-2-c.com/reciprocal-links.htm  - but wasn't sure if this was
appropriate

Have you checked some of the scripts listed at
http://cgi.resourceindex.com?
A quick search turned up a number of potentially useful perl scripts,
eg:

Reciprocal Link Manager 
  Version: 1.0 - Released: 07/19/01 - $29.95 - Unix 
  This script allows you to setup and maintain reciprocal links
between your website and other websites. Includes email notification
and SSI/non-SSI display modules.

TigerTom's Free-for-Some Link-Trader   
  Version: 1.0 - Released: 06/12/02 - Free - Unix, Windows 95/NT
  Trade and verify reciprocal links with other sites easily and
efficiently. This script checks if they've already linked to your
site, filters bad words, filters dynamically-generated links, filters
duplicate posts for the same domain, limits link text length, allows
one post per day, and emails the poster with a message from you.

Link Master  
  Version: 3.0 - Released: 05/15/03 - $34.95 - Unix, Windows NT
  This script automates the task of keeping track of link exchange
agreements with other websites. It will crawl each link on your links
page to make sure a reciprocal link is found and qualifies as a HTML
link that can be spidered by the search engines. It emails insertion
code to add to your links page for each new member.

..and more.

Thanks,

I've had a look at them, but it seems we'll need some adaptation to
our database requirements ( which are simple enough )

Did you look at the Rob Sherwood web site link i sent. Somethin
gsimilar to this would be very helpful

Kind Regards