Shropshire Council under fire over £3 million consultant plan

The authority says bringing a “strategic partner” on board for up to three years will help bring about whole-scale changes to how services are delivered – saving more than £50m a year in the process.

But the move has not gone down well, with opposition councillors comparing it to the council’s previous appointment of a ‘pothole consultant’ at £1,000 a day.

Council leader Lezley Picton told cabinet colleagues at a meeting on Wednesday that the partner would help deliver the priorities set out in the ‘Shropshire Plan’, the overarching strategic plan for the council, which was adopted last year.

Councillor Picton said her administration “does not underestimate” the scale of the challenge it faces in reshaping how the council runs, and had concluded that expert help was needed to achieve this.

She said: “This partner will not only drive through the organisational shift needed but also work very closely with our staff, up-skilling them in the process.

“This, in my view, is investing to save. This is about getting the machinery in place that we need to take this council to the next level.

“I really genuinely recognise that whole-scale change can be exhausting. I know that our staff are already at capacity, I know that they are working flat out and they have been for years.

“It would not be right for us as an administration to simply heap more pressure on them."

Councillor Picton added: “The partner will help provide significant resource and the expertise that frankly we just don’t have in this organisation.

“This external support capacity and expertise is vital to drive forward the change we need. It’s not a ‘nice to have’, it’s a necessity.

“In the short term it will prove invaluable, in the medium and long term it will put Shropshire Council on a stable financial footing going forward, and, I genuinely believe this, at the forefront and centre of local government delivery.”

However opposition councillors said the expenditure could not be justified.

Liberal Democrat group leader Councillor Roger Evans compared the move to the council’s heavily criticised use of a £1,000-a-day highways adviser back in 2020 – dubbed the “pothole consultant”.

Councillor Evans said: “I can’t understand, when we are trying to save over £51m making a number of efficiencies – I will call them cuts – while spending £1m a year [on this]. To try and justify that will take some doing.”

He added that it was not acceptable that members learned of the plans through the media.

Labour group leader Councillor Julia Buckley added: “It is rather disturbing to see that £3m will be spent on an external consultant to advise this council on how to get rid of more staff.”

However, Councillor Gwilym Butler, portfolio holder for finance and corporate resources, gave assurance that there would be no redundancies.

Councillor Richard Marshall, portfolio holder for highways, admitted he was sceptical about the idea at first. But he added that he had seen first hand the positive changes the highways consultant had brought about within his portfolio, both in terms of financial savings and quality of work, which he said proved how beneficial it could be to bring in external specialists in some circumstances.

Councillor Picton summed up: “We need that external expertise to work with us and push through the shift in this organisation that is required.

“We have a plan and know where we are going.”