Shropshire Council's opposition leader 'dubious' about consultation reports
The leader of the opposition at Shropshire Council says she is “dubious” about the reports received from expensive consultees.
Councillor Dawn Husemann (Reform UK, Claverley and Worfield) is the vice-chair of the Transformation and Improvement Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which met for the first time this week following the elections.
In the public question time, John Palmer asked if the committee had diligently studied the PwC contract and been fully briefed by officers.
It comes after council leader, Heather Kidd said the administration would stop using expensive consultants and would invest more in its own people to find solutions that work for Shropshire.
One of the council’s most expensive contracts is with consultancy firm PrcewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). However, Cllr Kidd said it cost the council up to £17,000 a day and the new adminstration wants to “rein in” the spend.
“Is the scrutiny committee going to discuss and analyse if PwC have so far failed, by being unable to reveal anticipated tangible cost savings from its long-running renegotiation of the 27-year Waste PFI contract with Veolia, running until 2034?” asked Mr Palmer.
In response, Councillor David Minnery, the chair of the committee, said the work programme is on the agenda which may, if decided by members of the committee, include the areas referred to in the question.
Cllr Husemann said: “There needs to be a much greater understanding and I know incredibly expensive they are.
“I was dubious about the number of wonderful reports that you get that don’t really seem to provide that much benefit on the ground.”
The issue of scrutiny itself is one of the things that the committee will be looking at, said Cllr Minnery.
“The feeling amongst leadership is that it hasn’t consistently been working in improvements that ought to be coming,” he said.
