Bill for consultants continues to drop for city council

The amount of money Peterborough City Council spends on consultants continues to fall, the authority’s audit committee has been told.

Between April and December, the council spent £ 2.8 million on consultants and interims ( temporary replacements for permanent staff), compared to £ 5.4million for the whole of the previous financial year.

This itself was a fall from £ 6.4million in 2010- 11 and £ 8.5million in 2009- 10.

Speaking at a meeting of the committee at Peterborough Town Hall, the head of strategic finance Steven Pilsworth said: “The figures continue to confirm the reduced level of spend in consultancy and interims.”

An appendix in the report before members included a breakdown of the expenditure by company in the current financial year.

This, for instance, revealed a spend of £ 271,934 on feasibility studies on the energy park project.

The biggest spend is currently with AMTEC Consulting Plc, where a little over £ 1million and £ 87,000 has been spent in consultancy and interims respectively. There was concern, however, among some members that the breakdown did not extend to individual projects.

Mr Pilsworth reassured members that the expenditure on all major schemes would have been examined at the appropriate scrutiny committees.

It was a point echoed by Cllr David Seaton, cabinet member for resources, who said to provide such detail to the audit committee would merely be “doubling up work”.

Councillor David Seaton.