Issue - meetings

(a)       That additional information supplied as part of the annual accounts on individual consultants should include spend on all consultants;

(b)       That officers look at the reasons for any further non-compliance with corporate requirements and procedures and check appropriate management actions and accountability; and

(c)       That a separate report outside the usual follow-up update be brought to the Committee’s meeting on 13 July 2016.

The Internal Audit Manager presented a report on the findings of the review on the Council’s use of consultants, following previous discussion by the Committee.  He gave a reminder that the scope of the review had been around the controls and processes of engaging consultants and had not looked at the need for or value of consultants.  However, during the process it became clear that the scope should be widened.

During explanation on the review, the Internal Audit Manager advised that the general ledger figure of £2.8m spend on consultants was considered inaccurate due to miscoding and misinterpretation of consultancy definitions and that this was a major factor of the report.  He provided detail on the findings, adding that a number of actions had been taken since preparation of the report, for example a working group to drive forward the actions, the implementation of new business case arrangements and communications to the Chief Officer team and management to follow-up actions.  He gave assurance on the involvement of Internal Audit as part of that work and that of the officer group on accounting codes.

The Chief Executive provided context by acknowledging the need to widen the scope of the review to include controls, adding that miscoding errors did not mean inappropriate spend, which could for example be on specialist training.  He gave a reminder that consultants were engaged (through agencies or individuals) to provide specific tasks for which the Council had no internal expertise.  He said that consultancy spend this year had decreased and that the Corporate Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee had been satisfied with the explanations on managing risk within the Change programme.  The new arrangements for consultancy engagement meant that those under £25K would require approval by the Chief Officer (Governance) with the Chief Executive taking responsibility for all proposed consultancy spend over £25K.  Information was shared on the few consultants above this threshold who were engaged in Organisational Change, Streetscene and Social Services.  All were being monitored and had business cases on record.  For the ongoing use of consultants, officers were challenging outcomes and progress to gain assurance with the expectation for knowledge sharing.

Councillor Alison Halford referred back to when she had first raised the issue of consultants.  She spoke about the time taken to clarify definitions, the report from March 2011 which had focussed on controls rather than cost, followed up by a commitment from former Directors to share information on consultants, a further report on controls in December 2011 and work carried out by the Wales Audit Office (WAO).  She raised concerns about the four bullet-points under the audit opinion in the report, which she felt did not correlate to what the Chief Executive had said.  She went on to speak about the lack of recognition of consultancy organisations used by the Council as opposed to individual consultants and suggested that the £3m spend recorded for 2014/15 could have been much higher.  She asked about the source of the budget for consultants and went to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 43