3 days ago
Perth and Kinross Council spent £3 million on consultants over the past three years
A Perth and Kinross councillor believes the rising spend on outsourcing work is an "inevitable consequence" of cuts to the local authority's budget
Perth and Kinross Council has spent around £3 million - possibly more - employing the use of consultants over the past three years.
Between 2022 and 2025 the local authority awarded 31 contracts for consultants often due to a lack of resources or in-house specialist knowledge.
The contracts range from £594,300 (exc VAT) for its Perth People Place and Perth Transport Futures programme - which includes the Cross Tay Link Road project - to £5625 (exc VAT) on VAT advice for Perth's new leisure facility PH2O.
Most of the figures are publicly available on the government's Public Contracts Scotland website and exclude VAT. However there were no financial figures published for four of the 31 contracts awarded to consultants by PKC between 2022 and 2025. PKC has suggested this may be due to the information being "commercially sensitive".
Explanations as to why consultants were paid to do a job rather than council employees was provided by Perth and Kinross Council in response to a Freedom of Information request made by the Local Democracy Reporting Service. In many cases it was blamed on a lack of council resources.
A Perth and Kinross Council spokesperson said: "Payments for individual consultants vary depending on the length and nature of the work involved.
"In some cases, costs may not be published if they were commercially sensitive; for example if supplier rates could be worked out from the value of the contract."
In many cases - such as the review of the council's arm's-length external organisations (ALEOs) - PKC said contracting out the work saved the local authority money.
A PKC spokesperson said: "We have saved money by going direct to a consultancy for the options appraisal exercise they have undertaken as this was carried out over a much shorter time period than the temporary post and at a lesser cost."
Vice-convener of Perth and Kinross Council's Scrutiny and Performance Committee Labour councillor Alasdair Bailey believes the mounting figures are the "inevitable consequence of the years of real-terms cuts we've seen to council budgets".
Bailie Bailey said: "This is something that I'll take time to dig into the detail of in order to find and question any cases where spends look excessive. I'd like to thank the Perthshire Advertiser for getting this information into the public domain.
"The headline figures are concerning but - to put this into perspective - the use of consultants sometimes allows the council to do more without having to employ full-time permanent staff. These numbers are therefore an inevitable consequence of the years of real-terms cuts we've seen to council budgets. Gone are the days when a council the size of Perth and Kinross can justify having all the specialists in the building all of the time."
The amount of taxpayers' money spent on consultant fees to provide services to Perth and Kinross Council has risen over the course of the the three years.
In 2022/23 the total cost was £721, 573. It rose to £779,553 in 2023/25 before soaring to £935,210 in 2024/25. All costs indicated on the Public Contracts Scotland website exclude VAT.
Costs not listed include two contracts awarded in 2023 and 2024 for a Development Control Works Package.
Explaining the need for a consultant to provide the package, a PKC spokesperson said: "As part of the Flooding Teams duties, we provide non-statutory consultation to all proposed development applications across Perth and Kinross. While we endeavour to appraise these in-house, during times of increased workload or flooding events where resources are stretched it is not possible to maintain the service and therefore, we require to utilise the support of an external consultant to ensure a continuation of the planning response. The consultant is also occasionally tasked with undertaking design work or focussing on larger, more complex planning applications which may be out with the skill set currently within the Flooding team."
