SCOTLAND’S 32 local authorities have spent nearly £13m on consultants in the last 15 months.
The figures, obtained by The National through Freedom of Information requests, show that cash-strapped Edinburgh City Council has by far spent the most.
The local authority, which announced at the start of the year it was cutting 1,200 jobs as part of a drive to make savings of £138m, spent £5.1m, with the vast majority of that being split over three companies, Deloitte Consulting, PWC and Ernst & Young.
Fife Council was next, spending just under £2.8m, with almost all going to management and IT consultancy firm Capgemini.
However, the overall figures were significantly less than in 2010 when trade union Unison had run a similar exercise.
Then the trade union had discovered that Scotland’s councils were spending a combined total of around £42m.
A Unison spokesperson said: “Given the financial pressures local authorities are under we welcome that spending on consultants has been going down.
“That said, there is an irony in the way that organisations, so keen to push private sector solutions, take so much money from the public purpose.
“Councils could avoid much of this spending by recognising and utilising the expertise they have among their own staff.”
Eben Wilson, director of TaxpayerScotland said: “It’s very easy to use consultants to avoid risks. But tax-payers expect councils to be able to manage the functions requested of them.
“This amount of money being spent on consultants suggests to us that the work that high paid council executives are hired to do is being handed over to equally highly-paid consultants.
“This doesn’t offer tax-payers real value for money.”
A spokesperson for Edinburgh City Council said: “Spend in this area is closely monitored to ensure that we get best value for Edinburgh’s tax-payers.
“We assess when it is necessary to engage external professionals to augment the skills and capacity of our own staff, who in turn benefit from the specialist knowledge being brought in-house.
“We will continue to look closely at expenditure on engaging external professionals and consultants to ensure that it adds significant value to the council’s own work.”
Fife Council’s head of IT Charlie Anderson commented: “Capgemini are working in partnership with the council to deliver our new financial system.
“It’s important to stress that the £2.7m is a one-off spend on the implementation and delivery of this new system that will transform our business processes.”
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