Agenda item

That the Committee is assured that expenditure on consultants is being controlled.

The Internal Audit Manager introduced a report on the implementation of the new system for managing the Council’s use of consultants, as an update to the report received in January 2016.  Following initial work, the new procedures had been fully implemented across the organisation by April 2016 and issues identified during the early stages had been addressed as set out in the report.  The outcome of the review showed that the system was effective in ensuring that the use of consultants and associated spend was being controlled and monitored.

The Chief Executive thanked the Internal Audit Manager for his input along with that of the Finance officers in helping to address the miscoding errors.  He also thanked the Corporate Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee for its interest in the value for money element of consultants.  The latest update report to that Committee gave an analysis of consultants used during 2015/16 and demonstrated value for money and impact.  Of those consultants, two were continuing work into 2016/17.  In making a summary of the findings of the report, the Chief Executive advised that the total expenditure on consultants engaged during 2015/16 (£484,522) was a much lower figure than had previously been (incorrectly) reported and included work on some significant projects.  He felt that the new process enabled a greater degree of ownership on the use of consultants, and would share the Overview & Scrutiny report with the Vice-Chair.

The Chief Officer (Governance) explained that the procurement system included a ‘trigger’ for diverting approval of orders with consultancy codes to the Chief Officers and Chief Executive (under £25K in value) and to the Chief Executive (over £25K in value).

Councillor Ian Dunbar acknowledged the work which had been undertaken to improve the process.  In response to a query on the P2P procurement system, the Internal Audit Manager said that a different template was used for engaging consultants.  The manual forms currently used to enable the system to be set up in time would later be replaced by electronic forms.

Mr. Williams asked whether the use of coding for suppliers and consultants was being monitored and checked.  The Internal Audit Manager said that use of the two new codes were checked against authorisation forms and that the old codes were now closed.  The Chief Officer confirmed that codes were checked by the Procurement team with any inaccuracies highlighted and explained to the relevant officer.  Due to the potential for suppliers to be categorised in other groups as well as consultants, manual checking was undertaken.  As a further control measure, the Corporate Finance Manager spoke about involvement by the Finance Management Team in monitoring specific codes.

Councillor Arnold Woolley raised concerned that some forms were not being sent to the Procurement team on completion of projects and sought reassurance that employees were aware of their responsibilities, particularly in view of the changing workforce.  The Internal Audit Manager advised that the Procurement team would follow this up with the relevant managers after the project end date.

Councillor Glyn Banks suggested that an automatic trigger could be built into the system to highlight the need for officers to return the third stage forms following the project end date.  The Internal Audit Manager said that this would be considered when the manual forms were computerised.  On the control form, Councillor Banks felt that the reason for any increase in costs should be flagged up following procurement of the consultant (section 2) as opposed to waiting until the completion of the project (section 3).  The Chief Executive said that any such changes were expected to be identified during the monitoring stage.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee is assured that expenditure on consultants is being controlled.