More Shock at Council's use of Consultants

24.4 Consultants

I was intrigued by your article ‘Shock as council’s £11m consultants’ fees revealed’ (West Briton 22/4/10). It is good that even in such times of recession that one industry is doing well. Sorry, I should remember sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

I seem to remember a small minority of your correspondents defending the current Council CEO-Kevin Lavery’s salary. The defence-if I remember rightly- was something along the lines of the council has to pay top dollar to get the best.

Taking that line as factual (which personally I don’t), why then has the council had to supplement its top talent by paying an additional £11 million to consultants, on top of these senior managers’ salaries? And that is just in a year! Surely Mr Lavery et al should bring such talent themselves to the table, without the extra expense of paying consultants? .

To top it all, and to add further insult to injury, Mr Lavery’s own Chief Executive’s Department top the council’s consultant’s league table-by almost double- with expenditure of £2.36m. Human Resources-who are supposed to advise managers on personnel matters, thought they needed further advisors at a cost of £1.1m. Private Finance Initiative schemes required consultancy of just under £0.5n ( I thought such outsourcing was meant to be cheaper than in house provision; so why did they need to ‘outsource’ advice to decide to ‘outsource’. (If you can follow that- which sounds straight out of Yes Minister!)

The current Conservative led administration of the council promised to cut waste, so frontline services could be protected in such times of austerity. Despite encouraging us to ‘Vote For Change,’ the Tories are clearly following the New Labour template of being too frightened to make up their own minds, and to outsource advice. However we must remember they themselves are elected to make decisions, and to employ officers of high calibre to advise them. This will not do, and does not bode well if the Tories are elected on 6th May, with Mr Cameron (ex PR Consultant) at their helm. We need real change. We must protect and develop public services and cut unnecessary waste such as this.

I must go now I have an election to fight.