Shropshire Council’s £1m bill for consultants
Saturday 6th November 2010, 11:30AM GMT.
Shropshire Council spent more than £1 million on consultants fees in the last financial year, it was revealed today.
The authority, which needs to find £65 million of savings over the next three years, paid out the cash between April last year and March.
Campaign group the Taxpayers’ Alliance described the figure as “worrying” while Councillor Alan Mosley, leader of the Labour group on Shropshire Council, called for an immediate overhaul of protocols governing the hiring of consultants.
But Shropshire Council today defended the amount paid and said employing consultants was an efficient way of gaining specialist advice.
The Freedom of Information request by the Shropshire Star shows the sum paid to consultants included £138,190 to London-based Savills Commercial Ltd for a stock condition survey.
Officials also paid £34,027 to four separate consultancy firms for legal advice and general advice connected with a PFI waste contract.
The council paid Manchester-based Morris Hargreaves £14,150 to develop an “Arts Strategy” and £2,350 to Birmingham consultant Angelena Boden — a freelance trainer.
Fiona McEvoy, from the alliance, said: “This reliance upon consultants is worrying, particularly as they’re so costly. Many taxpayers in Shropshire will be shocked at such a significant amount being spent on external advice, particularly as the payroll has grown so much in recent years with many more well-paid officers taken on at managerial and executive level.
“It’s important they start to source some of the skills they need from within their own ranks.”
Councillor Mosley said he was “amazed” at the total of £1,104,760.24, adding that although the hiring of some consultants was necessary, more work should be done ‘in-house’.
Council chief executive Kim Ryley said consultancy fees made up less than 0.5 per cent, of the council’s annual budget.
“Consultants are a valuable part of running any large, complex organisation and provide essential specialist advice at key stages of development,” he said.
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this is a disgrace – these so called senior managers take home about 10 times a typical shropshire wage and yet they not make a decision on their own ? are they not qualified or not decisive enough?
if the consultants so good make them cheif exec if the chief exec is so bad as to need a consultant then sack them
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So you think the chief exec is qualified to give legal/engineering/social/etc advice on various multi million pound issues? Get real. Nor are his staff. You either get in these specialist consultants to do ad hoc work and pay them the going rate, or you employ them all full time on the stupidly massive salaries their specialist knowledge can command. Engage your brain before you type.
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John, All major organisations use consultants mainly because they have long since outsourced specialised services and use these people on a as and when needed basis. One of the main uses is to carry out feasibility studies to help decide if projects should go ahead or not.
The company I work for uses consultants on a regular basis but without knowing the full details I cannot really comment on the Councils spend?
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Half a story. So they spent £1m on consulting fees. Do we know whether that resulted in savings (or avoided additional spending) of more than £1m? If so, then that’s what I call value for money. If not, then I would agree it’s a waste of money. But you can’t make a judgement with only half the information.
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While the figure of 1,000,000 is not a vast amount, it raises two questions, to my mind.
1) How many consultants shared this money?.
2) Does this mean that the members of the council are incapable?.
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My experience in business for over 30 years in a national company is that a person who fails in his job becomes a consultant. Why does the council employ highly paid managers when they have to ask others how to do the job?
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buffoons
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You would expect, that in such a big organisation, that pays salaries in excess of £150K, in some cases that you would have, somewhere in the organistion, the expertise, somewhwere to solve all problems….maybe we are employing the wrong people, on far too much salary, if that is the case.
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How does this spending compare with other councils? What special skills are missing from their inventory that they need to take on expensive consultants rather then employ (on a short time basis if needs be). Does our council chief also earn more that our PM. Lots of questions I know, but not much in the way of full fact based reports.
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“…. take on expensive consultants rather then employ (on a short time basis if needs be).”
Isn’t that saying you shouldn’t employ consultants rather then (sic) consultants?
Surely hiring someone short-term is basically hiring a consultant?
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well if SCC need to spend this money on consultants it is obvious that they are selecting the wrong candidates during job selection and/or the job specification is incorrect, either way the council is a fault. So we pay for their inefficiencies as usual.
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Or here is another possibility. They only need these specialist consultants for perhaps a few weeks at a time. So employing them full time, at much higher wages, would be the course of action taken by a complete moron.
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well sack them then – that ought to keep a leisure centre or two open for another year atleast!
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I’ll give them some advice for nothing. Cut your bloody budget and get rid of waste. Stop this ridiculous nonsense of consultants. what on earth do you get paid for if YOU cant do the job!
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I don’t know what you do for a living, but for arguments sake, let’s say you work in IT. You should be able to do every aspect of IT your company may need.
But what if your company want to buy in a new specialist database? They could pay for the company who sell the database to come in for two weeks to set it up and show you how to use it. Or by your logic, they could sack you.
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do these idiots realise real people are losing real jobs and real homes at the moment
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dave i agree with you these people are far away from reality,well done to Alan Mosley for bringing this to our attention.The council must have money to waste as they have taken down bus stops in coton hill using contractors a day after us losing our service yet these top managers get well paid and expenses sad really as they wouldn’t give a dam about us.
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either the council is over staffed (which i find hard to beleive) so you have to buy in extra workers or some one is wasting money because if they are looking to shed 25% of their workforce then why on earth would you take on any extra agency workers / consultants
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If a shop on the high street needs to have a window re-glazed, they contract out the work to a specialist glazier, and pay them the going rate. Or would you have the business either employ a glazier full time, just in case the window gets broken, or else have one of the existing employees have a go at fixing the window.
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Well put.
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well if its cheaper to use consultants – why have a legal department at all?? either its cheaper so you dont need one or its more expesnive in which case they are wasting our money when their own in house experts could have done the work for them
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If you don’t know how the legal profession works, you probably shouldn’t make comments about it.
You are saying the council’s legal department should either make the big decisions without the advice of a barrister, or they should employ barristers covering every aspect of law, full time. Both of your solutions would quickly cost the council WAY more than £1m extra per year.
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Julian – are you a consultant by any chance?
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ha ha, I’m not actually. I just get annoyed when people make comments that they haven’t thought through. Councils make decisions on how to spend serious amounts of money. They need to hire specialists to try to get those decisions right. Perhaps the £1m is overspend. But to say they shouldn’t hire any consultants is bonkers.
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Julian works for the Council I would expect and is well versed in not making a decision for himself but you guessed it “hiring a consultant”
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ha ha, wrong again. I have no vested interest other than that the council spend my money, and I’d rather they hired experts to advise on the big projects than have a stab at it themselves.
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whats the betting half of this was senior staff laid off just 6 months ago because they were surplus to requirements? this revolving door for public sector managers means they get a redundacy cheque but never actually get made redundant, it also shows the waste of constant management reorganisations
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Definition of a consultant: a man who borrows your watch to tell you the time.
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Was the Smithfield Road Constipator put there on the ‘advice’ of a consultant?
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The gravy train is going well in Shropshire Council. The Council have a large office of diversity people or is it not their job to offer assistance.
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Consultants are employed for a variety of reasons:
1) We believe our staff are stupid. Therefore we will employ consultants to check on the ideas our staff give us. Oddly the consultants agree with our staff, mainly, Our staff must get lucky.
2) If we have an unpopular decision to take, we employ a consultant to issue a report. It doesn’t matter what the report says. We will claim we were forced to take the action we did by the contents of the report. Which will have to remain confidential for reasons of commercial confidentiality.
There are other reasons, of course.
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I would agree in the Public Sector these two reasons are the top scoring answers when you ask 100 managers the question “Why do you hire Consultants” in the Private Sector the answers are very different and have been mentioned above – skills, makes commercial sense etc.
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It is very apparent that there are many posters on this article that have no clue how much “consultants” are used in every aspect of business, government, and daily lives.
Julian appears to be a refreshing voice of reason along with a couple of others.
If you don’t know the answer and don’t have the skils to find the answer yourself, you ask some one that does have the skills and can provide the answer. And then you pay them for their time and knowledge.
If the answer is right, great, life goes on without a bunch of people bleating about your over-inflated headcount and payroll costs. Should the answer turn out to be wrong, you sue them.
Next time you pay an engineer, mechanic, plumber, electrician, carpenter, accountant, ….. consider how short-sighted all the critical comments are on this article.
Get a life. Peace.
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We tax payers of Shropshire have no choice in either the appointment or salary of Kym Ryder@£185k per year (£20k more that David Cameron) yet he and Shropshire Council should still be above reproach according to Julian – This is my money that is being squandered – how can the leader of a rural county take a salary greater than that of the PM of our country and still need £1M worth of consultants each year? I will answer my own question, Its because they take however much they want from all of us each year and then feel that they do not have to account to us.
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Do not put words into my mouth salopian. The chief exec’s salary has never been mentioned and is a separate issue. This discussion is about £1m paid out to gain specialist advice. If the council employed people who had that specialist knowledge on a full time basis, your tax bill would go through the roof. What part of that do you not understand?
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Hell has no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principal
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Sounds like taxation without representation to me. Might be worth starting a civil war?
I cannot help myself so I will take the bait on the PM salary issue. Are people so short-sighted that they cannot understand why someone wants to be PM? The salary is probably so far down the list that you wouldn’t be able to find it. Thimk power, power, and more power. Then at the end of their term, a book deal that will make them £10M.
Also consider the fact that the bulk (a rough estimate) of life-time politicians are independantly wealthy so don’t care about an MP’s salary.
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And, on the squandered money point…. would you rather they spent £1M on consultants or started a dozen projects costing, say £5M, only to find 6 months in that they didn’t have the necessary knowledge, skills and experience during the planning process, which they could have got with consultants, and have to scrap everything they’ve done? £5M squandered.
Rest assured it has/would happen.
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I can see by your user name you can tie your own shoelaces no need for a consultant there then. Jolly well done.
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Fortunately I had someone on staff that had the necessary skills and expertise to teach me. Had that not been the case, I’d have hired a consultant. Or bought slip-ons.
If you, or anyone else, needs to learn how to undertake this complex task I am available at £90 an hour (which roughly equates to £185K p.a.)
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yeah but you work a nomral 40 hour week in the council its less so more like £100 an hour right!
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to be fair if they had a head of legal on £100 k per annum they wouldnt need to get external lawyers in, but they that person would be the head line ! i do feel sometimes they cant win in the public sector
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Absoluetly correct – the public sector can’t win. The public and Members are very quick to complain when a job is poorly executed or problems arise ( which isn’t too often in the whole scheme of things thankfully ) or a service is removed; these succesful projects are the result of commited work by public sector staff, the vast majority of whom are paid far far less than management salaries quoted above and often work in excess of their contracted paid hours. Occassionally the expertise required cannot be provided by a staff member and consultants are employed on a short term basis, for the benefit of the project which is being provided for the benefit of the public of Shropshire!
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I guess it was a consultant that could not see that if a French company can empty my bin and make a profit why can Shropshire Council(who do not have to make a profit) not do it for cost e.g. it would be cheaper. We tax payers are nothing more than cash cows for the Council.
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Collecting the bins is only the tip of the iceberg. Do you also expect the Council to own, operate and maintain landfill sites, recycling facilities, incinerators and all the (very, very expensive) heavy plant and machinery that goes with it? Or do you not think it would be more cost effective for a third party company, which can perform this operation for multiple customers, thereby benefiting from economies of scale, to do it on the Council’s behalf?
As for the company being French: by law, all public sector contracts above a certain financial threshold have to be tendered for across the whole EU. This law also means that UK businesses are winning public sector contracts in France, so fair’s fair.
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it just shows they are all thick there, most people at the council have no qualifications and couldnt hold down a job in the real world private sector, i would never employ anyone who has council on their CV!
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And still they trot out the same anti public sector claptrap. Daniel R, please come back whe you have something useful to say which is based on fact and not your own prejudice.
I challenge you to provide proof to back up your inane rambling. I don’t suppose it will interest you in the slightest, as you’ve already clearly demonstrated that facts mean little to you, but I’ve successfully made the transition from public to private sector employment, and I’m not alone. Presently, I work in both sectors.
Thankfully, other posters here have shown that they are intelligent enough not be taken in by media half truths and what they’ve heard down the pub; apparently that seems to be beyond you though Daniel.
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I have worked in both the private and public sector (in fact I left the private for the public) and can confirm that my experience has generally been that in the public sector staff are better qualified and far more competant than those in the private sector.
I find that staff in the private sector are very good at talking the talk and telling you what they can do but when it actually comes to the delivery of task the results are often poor.
I regularily have meetings with people from private sector organisations and I often find myself feeling quite embarrassed for them when it comes to their lack of meeting skills and presenting knowledgable reasoned arguments.
One things for sure, I would never employ you as a public or private sector member of staff. You clearly present yourself as totally unemployable with unsupported retarded opinions such as yours.
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thats a slap in the face of redundant workers
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