There’s little surprise that the Isle of Wight council employs a number of consultants – most organisations need to bring in external skills occasionally.
What VB – and possibly most other Islanders – didn’t realise until now was the size of figure that the council has been spending on them.
Fortunately, those figures have now been revealed via an Freedom of Information request.
Over the last four years, the council has spent over £9.2 million on consultants.
The breakdown is as follows
- 2006-07 – £2,652,069
- 2007-08 – £3,236,886
- 2008-09 – £2,138,593
- 2009-10 – £1,179,374
Total over the last four years – £9,206,922.
As 2010 is still on-going, that year’s figures isn’t the final total.
Where’s the money gone?
VB hasn’t been provided with a complete breakdown of how much was spent on what, but we’ve got some of the details.
Over the four year period, part of that money has gone to five ex-Isle of Wight council employees that have returned to the council as consultants.
Other parts of the money went to ten people who were acting as executive officers at the council.
We asked the IWC for a comment this morning, but at the time of publishing, we haven’t received it from them.
More details to come
We don’t as yet have a breakdown of how much any of these ex-employees or executive officer received, who they were, what roles they performed in return for the money, or what the rest of the consultancy money has been spent.
We’re requesting from the council and will get back to you when we hear.
UPDATE: 13:23 5.Nov.2010 The IWC sent us the statement at 17:12 last night. They’ve told us that the specific questions that we asked have to be dealt with via an FoI request.
Statement on Consultants
In some circumstances when advice is required on a subject outside the knowledge or expertise of existing staff, or to fill a senior, often statutory, post temporarily while a permanent staff member of appointed, then a consultant may be engaged. This is common practice in both the private and public sectorsThe council does not appoint consultants when it has the required capacity or knowledge among existing staff members. All consultants are appointed in accordance with procedures designed to ensure the council achieves best value for money. Last financial year, less than one percent of the council’s staffing cost (0.8 per cent) was spent on consultants.
The alternative to using consultants is to employ permanent staff which means the council also has to meet associated factors such as pension contributions, sick pay and holiday entitlements usually making this a more expensive option.
Furthermore, it can be also be difficult to employ experts on what are usually short-term contracts.
These figures demonstrate that this council has in recent years successfully reduced the amount spent on consultants. The council would expect the figures for the current financial year (2010/11) to demonstrate that trend is continuing.
Image: Bert23 under CC BY-SA 2.0
