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Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Council to spend £150,000 for six weeks for ‘external expertise’ on cost-saving plan

More external consultants to help Nottingham City Council save money will cost the authority up to £149,000 for six weeks.

The council says it needs expertise it does not have in-house to find areas where costs can be reduced and improvements can be made.

The authority is planning the spend as part of its drive to meet the objectives of a Government-appointed improvement board.

These savings and improvements, included in the its four-year financial plan and Together for Nottingham Plan, must then be delivered and the council has a so-called ‘Strategic Delivery Partner’ to help it implement them.

The Strategic Delivery Partner contract is typically given out to external consultancy firms.

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Council delegated decision documents, which show that an officer has made a decision on behalf of the council, say the authority will be spending up to £149,250 to extend the use of its contracted Strategic Delivery Partner until November 18 this year.

The documents state: “To extend the Strategic Delivery Partner for a period of 6 weeks as part of the Transformation Programmes core team to support the engagement process with services, identifying potential cost reductions and service improvements opportunities which will form part of the 2023/24 budget process.”

The council has spent large sums of money on external support and consultants in recent months, including on an interim corporate director of finance, who was paid more than £300,000 in just over a year between 2021/22.

On top of this an external financial consultant was paid £110,000 for five months’ work, while the interim director for transformation and improvement, Richard Grice, was paid more than £1,000 per day over four months.

The improvement board, which was established following the collapse of Robin Hood Energy, requires the council to have set a balanced budget while demonstrating continued improvement.

Nottingham City Council says to achieve this it needs to have access to specific expertise when needed.

The old model used by the council to employ external expertise or
extra capacity in its departments was on a case-by-case basis, which took up significant portions of officers’ time and came with ‘significant transaction costs’.

The council says it “requires the ability to access a broad range of support and expertise, nimbly and with as little friction as possible, in order to ensure the good progress made so far can continue and with as little disruption as possible.”

Its Strategic Delivery Partner approach allows this to be done, the council says.

Previously speaking of the council’s need to spend sums of money on external support Cllr David Mellen (Lab), the leader of the authority, said:

“The Government’s non-statutory review of the council places a requirement on the council to improve, with a focus on financial and governance arrangements.

“We are making good progress on this, but we need external expertise at this early stage of our transformation, with changes required at pace.

“We made a request to Government for capitalisation, allowing us to borrow up to £20m against capital assets, which has helped us to create a transformation reserve.

“Some of this reserve money is being used to appoint external experts and set up new business support and customer service arrangements to drive the transformation activity that’s been identified is needed at the council. This does not impact on our budgets for running day-to-day services.”

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