More than £500,000 is set to be spent on consultants to help Hampshire and Isle of Wight councils formulate proposals for the major restructure of local authorities.
The 15 councils across the region have until 26th September to submit their preferred option for local government reorganisation (LGR).
Under a national scheme by the Labour government, LGR will see the current 2-tier system replaced with larger unitary councils delivering all services.
As work on restructuring plans has progressed, local authorities in the region have been leaning on consultants for support.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has learned that, come the submission of final proposals next month, councils are expecting to have spent at least £520,000 on consultancy work.
Earlier in the year, an initial submission to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government involved work by KPMG, which had been commissioned by all Hampshire and Isle of Wight councils.
A large portion of the consultant expenditure has been on the continuation of this joint work by 12 authorities but some local authorities have commissioned further seperate work.
Hampshire County Council and East Hampshire decided to work on their own plans as a partnership, while Gosport Borough Council is opposed to LGR and not committed any financial resources to formulating proposals.
Much of the consultancy cost has been covered using a £542,174 grant from government, which was awarded to support LGR preparations and split proportionally between the councils.
Southampton City Council looks to have paid the most on its own consultancy work, with the unitary authority confirming it had spent £60,000 in addition to the joint programme with other authorities.
On the Isle of Wight, it is anticipated that the share of joint work will be £37,000 by the time of submission, with the Council spending nothing on its own consultants.
Report by local democracy reporters Natalia Forero, Noni Needs, Rufus Pickles and Jason Lewis
Where do all these “consultants” come from? Are they all sat around with all this expertise at their fingertips waiting for the government to create work for nothing for them. Note, the government “expects” at least £500000 to be be spent on them.
What this means is that the councillors are inept and unable to do the work themselves and make the decsions – they have to get mummy and daddy consultants in to help them.
they are going to spend half a million quid on deciding what order the chairs are arranged in the council chamber and whose name is against which seat.
this is akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic in the hope that the outcome would be different.
Bit like the PFI consultants, cost the island a fortune.
What a lot of waffle and poor excuses for wasting our money, yet again.
For goodness sake the highly paid council officers must be experts at local government but are too lazy to do any work. Look where the floating bridge consultons’ left us. And we have the inefficient Island Roads because the council officers are to idle or lack the skills to manage the work themselves. So we pay for more premises and more managers and mangers to manage their managers.