derby council at its finest

[derbydan]

DERBY City Council is spending £1.2 million on a team of consultants… to help it save money.

The authority says it needs the advisors to help bring in major structural changes – including shedding 465 jobs or 10% of its workforce – with the aim of saving £32 million over the next three years.

But union leaders have blasted the move, describing it as a consultants' "feeding frenzy" and claiming that it demonstrates a lack of expertise among the council's senior management.

Initial work to identify where savings could be found was carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers under a Government initiative, which meant the £110,000 cost was picked up by regional Government bodies.

But the council then agreed to hire PricewaterhouseCoopers to help with the rest of the process – even though it would have to fund the £1.2 million cost.

It said that support was "vital" to the transformation programme.

Councillor Sean Marshall, cabinet member for resources, said: "It's important that we get exactly the right people to work with us to deliver these savings and the consultants are giving us the skills and expertise to do this."

But the cost and reliance on consultants has angered public sector union Unison.

Regional secretary Charlie Carruth said: "The council was always seen as a well-run authority, which provided services well. Now, all of a sudden, all that expertise seems to have disappeared and they can't provide services so consultants have to come in and provide them – it is a nonsense.

"It seems to me that an awful lot of consultants are having a feeding frenzy at the council taxpayers' expense."

The council announced the changes to its structure in September last year following PricewaterhouseCooper's initial review. Implementation began in January.

Previously, the authority had five departments – corporate and adult services, children and young people, regeneration and community, environmental services and resources and the chief executive's office.

But that has been reduced to four – children and young people, adults and health, resources and neighbourhoods and responsibility for regeneration has moved to the chief executive's department.

The number of corporate directors was reduced after retirements.

And a review was carried out into the 25 assistant director roles and 97 heads of services, with proposals to reduce those by 30 posts.

That was changed to a reduction of 23 following consultation with staff.

Now the authority is carrying out reviews in other areas of its work to see where more savings can be made, with the help of the PricewaterhouseCoopers advisors.

Mr Marshall said: "The initial work carried out by the consultancy firm offered an independent and groundbreaking method of assessing where the council could operate more efficiently.

"However, it was only an initial assessment – it did not go into the detail of how we change and restructure to reduce our budgets and deliver cashable savings.

"Our budget for the next three years includes a total of £23.5m savings and there is scope to make further savings over time."

He added: "Over time, our staff will learn these skills as the transformation programme continues. We are managing consultancy costs within the £1.2m and believe this represents value for money in the long term."

PricewaterhouseCoopers refused to go into detail on the work it was doing or its charges, saying it had nothing to add to the council's statement.