Taxpayer picks up £32m tab for town hall advisers’ fees
A STAGGERING £32million of taxpayers’ cash has been lavished on external consultants in the past five years by town hall chiefs.
Aberdeen City Council has been accused of filling the pockets of outside advisers as it seeks to transform the city with regeneration projects.
This year alone the Labour-led administration spent nearly £9million on more than 1,370 ‘transactions’ for consultants – an increase of £3million on last year. Since it took control of the council in 2012, consultant spending has risen by 246 per cent.
The fees cover the cost of hiring external companies to carry out tasks such as planning and corporate governance – as council bosses search for efficiency savings in the face of budget cuts. But council officers refused to break down the costs to show which consultants were hired and for which project, saying the exercise would exceed Freedom of Information statutory cost limits.
However, the local authority admitted nearly £19million of costs had been filed under the Communities, Housing and Infrastructure department.
Following a dramatic slump in oil prices that have slowed the city’s once-booming economy, the council is planning a 25-year multi-million-pound regeneration scheme, which it hopes will create 5,000 jobs.
In December last year BDP, an architecture and engineering firm hired by the council to deliver the city centre project, was paid nearly £400,000 by the authority. A further £120,000 was recently spent on hiring an external planning manager from a private firm in Leeds after the local authority’s head of planning quit last year.
Aberdeen City Council’s finance convener Willie Young admitted that the figures appeared high but added that the cash had been spent over several years and the money had been spent on ‘all sorts of things’.
However, SNP opposition group finance spokesman Graham Dickson branded the use of council funds as ‘shocking’.
He said: ‘It’s outrageous that this has got this far and this high.
‘This raises the question over whether councillor Young has a blank cheque approach to consultants and an open wallet approach to council finances in Aberdeen.
‘I think we all want to see a lot more care over how money is being spent and I for one question whether this has been an appropriate use of council funds.’
Eben Wilson of TaxpayerScotland said: ‘It’s extremely disturbing that
‘Appropriate use of funds’
very large sums of taxpayers’ money have been spent on third parties and yet there is no easily accessible audit trail of the purpose and beneficiaries of the money being spent.
‘The actions of the council in spending millions that they cannot easily explain or describe to councillors and local taxpayers shows a contempt for the hard work that goes into paying the taxes that fund that spending.’
Mr Wilson said that while he was not opposed to hiring outside consultants, taxpayers needed to know whether they were getting value for money.
He added: ‘The council should not hide behind the Freedom of Information Act “cost of compliance” regulations to get away with any lack of control over their spending.’