{"id":2132,"date":"2010-11-01T20:49:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T20:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/?p=2132"},"modified":"2010-11-10T14:47:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T14:47:23","slug":"use-of-consultants-november-update-playing-for-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/use-of-consultants-november-update-playing-for-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of Consultants: November Update – Playing for Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in March Cllr Fletcher posed a series of questions about who got paid what and when for consultancy services, believed to be up to \u00a312 million a year.
\nHere is an extract from the Agenda Reports Pack for the upcoming meeting of the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee for 9th November 2010 at 19:30pm. It is an outcome of sorts.
\nNone of these specific questions have been answered in the report<\/strong>, but named councillors have apparently been given access to a great deal of information which they will be required to examine. The answers should be in there somewhere, and we the people must wait for enlightenment until 1st February 2011, maybe longer, but a mighty long time anyhow. But they still haven’t answered the questions.
\n
\nFull Report Pack here<\/a> <\/p>\n

Note: the formatting has suffered in transit from pdf to web. Line endings\/carriage return are affected, for which please be patient.<\/p>\n

SCRUTINY REVIEW – USE OF CONSULTANCY
\n1. PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND
\n1.1 At their meeting of 15 March 2010, the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee requested a
\nreview into the Council\u2019s use of consultancy.
\n1.2 Before this review, the Best Value and Corporate Resources Policy Overview Committee
\nundertook a review of the council\u2019s use of consultants and agency staff. It produced a number
\nof recommendations, which are set out in Appendix 1.
\n1.3 In November 2006 a monitoring report was provided to the Committee in respect of the
\nrecommendations. This is attached as Appendix 2.
\n1.4 The purpose of this report is to provide an interim update on the work undertaken by the current
\nreview group.
\n2. RECOMMENDATIONS
\n2.1 The panel are asked to acknowledge the content of this report.
\n3. INTERIM REPORT
\n3.1 At a meeting of the Environment Capital Scrutiny Committee on 14 January 2010, to discuss
\nthe proposed Council budget, the subject of use of consultants arose. It was agreed that the
\nSustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee be recommended to undertake an in-depth scrutiny
\nreview into the cost and effectiveness of the Council\u2019s use of consultants and to make
\nrecommendations on the future use of consultants by the Council to inform the development of
\nbudgets in future years. At its meeting of the 18 January 2010, the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny
\nCommittee produced a list of questions which it asked to be answered, and they are included at
\nAppendix 3.
\n3.2 On the 15 March 2010, the Cabinet Member for Resources delivered a report on the use of
\nconsultants to the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee. Following this report and
\nsubsequent discussion, the Panel requested a task and finish group to be established to review
\nthe council\u2019s use of consultants and report back on its findings and recommendations.
\n3.3 In line with protocol, the Scrutiny Manager wrote to the Group Secretaries seeking nomination
\nfor the review. Councillors Lane, North, Sandford and Murphy were put forward by their
\nrelevant parties.
\n3.4 The group have met a regularly, firstly to agree the definition of consultancy and to agree a
\nTerms of Reference, which is attached as Appendix 4.
\n93
\n3.5 Officers from Children\u2019s Services, Strategic Resources, City Services, Peterborough Delivery
\nPartnership and the Operations Directorate have been interviewed to assess:
\n(i) The impact that consultants have had upon their service areas, at a programme,
\nproject and individual level in terms of benefit realisation, knowledge transfer and
\ncost; and
\n(ii) The measures in place for identifying staff potential as a route to reducing reliance
\non consultants.
\n3.6 The group have reviewed invoices, relevant contracts and have been provided with and have
\nreceived training in order to be able to review information through the Verto project
\nmanagement system.
\n3.7 The next step for the group will be to meet to discuss the large volume of information that has
\nbeen provided to assist the review process, and to report findings to the Scrutiny Committee on
\n1 February 2011.
\n4. KEY ISSUES
\n5.1 The use of consultants is an accepted business practice in many sectors, including the public
\nsector, which is regulated by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). The group have
\nfound at this interim stage that the use of consultants by many local authorities, including
\nPeterborough City Council has increased in recent years.
\nThe group has also established that the figure of \u00a312.4m discussed at previous Scrutiny
\nCommittees included the costs associated with contractors. For the purposes of this review, the
\ngroup have concluded that the amount spent on consultancy by Peterborough City Council was
\n\u00a36.6m over the same time period, April 2009 – December 2009. The total spending on
\nconsultancy, as per the group\u2019s agreed definition for the financial year 2009-10 was \u00a38.2m.
\nContextual information that outlines the spending on consultancy will be submitted with the
\ngroup\u2019s final report.
\nThe group will also report its findings with regard to whether consultants are improving
\noutcomes for Peterborough citizens and delivering real value for money in terms of cashable
\nand non-cashable savings.
\n5.2 The group accept that expert impartial advice is sometimes required for specialist project work,
\nhowever one of the recommendations from the 2006 review was \u2018when there is the need to
\nappoint someone for a time limited piece of work the Council\u2019s policy should be to look within
\nexisting staff first to see if anyone has the required skills\u2019.
\nThe group is committed to ensuring that managers are making efficient use of the skills of
\nexisting staff and will be reporting on this in its final report.
\n5.3 It is clear from officer interviews that Council departments are taking steps to become more
\nbusiness like and efficient and that there is a corporate drive to achieve this. The group has
\nheard from a number of sources that private sector expertise is required to deliver reform. The
\ngroup is in the process of undertaking a cost and quality comparison exercise to satisfy itself
\nthat the council is getting value for money from consultants.
\n6. IMPLICATIONS
\n6.1 It is proposed that, once completed, the review group\u2019s report might inform the Cabinet Member
\nfor Resources on how the council can increase the value for money from the use of consultants
\nand improve outcomes for staff and Peterborough citizens.
\n94
\n7. EXPECTED OUTCOMES
\n7.1 That the panel acknowledge the progress made by the review group.
\n8. NEXT STEPS
\n8.1 The review group is subject to regular meetings and will report back to Scrutiny on 1 February
\n2011 with full details of its findings.
\n9. BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS
\nUsed to prepare this report, in accordance with the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985
\n9.1 None
\n10. APPENDICES
\n10.1 Appendix 1 – 2006 Summary of Recommendations
\nAppendix 2 – 2006 Review of Recommendations
\nAppendix 3 – Councillor Fletcher\u2019s questions
\nAppendix 4 – Terms of Reference and consultancy definition<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Full Report Pack here<\/a><\/p>\n

Interview with Mike Fletcher 10th November 2010<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in March Cllr Fletcher posed a series of questions about who got paid what and when for consultancy services, believed to be up to \u00a312 million a year. Here is an extract from the Agenda Reports Pack for the upcoming meeting of the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee for 9th November 2010 at 19:30pm. It … Continue reading “Use of Consultants: November Update – Playing for Time”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[162,145,147,163],"class_list":["post-2132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbc-radio-peterborough","tag-amtec-consulting","tag-consultants","tag-mike-fletcher","tag-v4-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2135,"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions\/2135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newlistener.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}