Council spent £21k on scrutiny consultants

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Questions have been asked as to why nearly £21,000 has been spent on external consultants to help improve the scrutiny process at Powys County Council (PCC).

Councillors have raised their concerns recently over cuts proposed in the PCC draft budget for a “complete restructure of the Scrutiny, Democratic and Member Services team” which would see the team number fall from eight to six.

This is supposed to save £179,000 and is part of an overall proposal in the service to save £282,000 and could be part of the £11million in cuts/savings that need to be made in the next financial year, 2020/21.

Chairman of the Democratic Services Committee, Cllr Elwyn Vaughan asked: “In view of the proposed restructure of democratic services and concerns raised about the possible impact this may have on the scrutiny service and the risk of increased need and costs of external support for scrutiny.

“Can you confirm the level of costs incurred by the council on external scrutiny consultant support for the period Sept 2014 to date?”

Portfolio holder for corporate governance and engagement, Cllr Graham Breeze replied: “The only payments made to external consultants to support scrutiny in the period requested were to Public Governance Wales and Learning for Leadership Wales for work in 2017/2018.”

Cllr Vaughan, responded: “After seeing that the council has paid over £20,000 in consultancy fees to help the scrutiny process when there has been a full team of officers it raises the question how much will be spent after these cuts?

“Many of us have raised concerns and the Wales Audit Office (WAO) made it clear how important the scrutiny procedure is and the historical weakness of it in Powys. We will be keeping a close eye on this.”

Cllr Breeze defended the cuts at a meeting of the Economy, Residents, Communities and Governance Scrutiny Committee where he also gave assurances that the standard of support will be maintained.