£332k net spend on external consultants by Wrexham Council

Wrexham Council spent £332,000 on consultants last year, and nearly £250k on barrister or solicitor advice and representation.

New figures released voluntarily by the council not only give a numerical breakdown but also details of which entity was used, and some information as to why.

Overall between April 1st 2018 to the end of March 2019 Wrexham Council spent £503,697.99 on consultants, however £168,391 of that was covered by external funding, meaning a net £332,479.16 spend. That is up from a £200k net spend the year before, however considerably down after PWC were binned off by the council, but only after a multimillion pay day.

The Council defines a consultant as “A person (not an employee), agency or firm engaged for a limited period of time on a fee basis to carry out a specific task or tasks. A consultant provides subject matter, expertise and/or experience to the council either because it does not possess the skills or resources in-house or which requires an independent evaluation/assessment to be made”.

Korn Ferry Hay Group were hired for £26k to provide independent support for the Interim Chief Executive/Chief Executive to enable a ‘review of Senior Management structure’.

ARC4 were commissioned to undertake a Homelessness Review on behalf of the Housing and Economy department and draft a subsequent Homelessness Strategy, with a cost of £16.8k .

Other consultant work, such as providing bridge inspections to 6 bridges in Wrexham (£14k), design of LED street lighting of the highway network within Wrexham (£157k) and some VAT consultants (£1.1k) were also hired.

One unknown consultant was scored ‘would hesitate to use again’ by Wrexham Council.

Although the new details do not look that far back, 2015-16 saw a net spend of £1,120,431 and 2016-17 saw a net spend of £1,626,380 . Those large sums were made up predominantly by Price Waterhouse Coopers , a well documented hire, although there was discussion over which political group was responsible for the commission.

The new figures show £207,643 was spent by Wrexham Council on barristers between April 1st 2018 to the end of March 2019 , and in the same period they spent £41,834 on solicitors.

Linenhall Chambers in Chester saw the most of the barrister work, and Jolliffe & Co also in Chester had the largest total bill for the council.

For comparison, 2015-16 saw £80,936.09 spent on barristers, and £18,255 on solicitors. The year after, 2016-17, £106,832 was spent on solicitors and £88,768.75 on barristers. 2017-18 saw £64,994.58 on barristers and £177,015.32 on solicitors.