Jamie Carpenter,
Regeneration & Renewal,
14 June 2010
Department for Communities and Local Government's spending on consultants in 2009/10 revealed.
The Department for Communities and Local Government spent nearly £29 million on consultants in 2009/10, according to an analysis of Treasury data by Regeneration & Renewal.
Audio: Deputy editor Jamie Carpenter and features editor Adam Branson discuss the DCLG consultancy costs in the latest Ten Minute Briefing
Earlier this month, the Treasury published the contents of its vast Combined Online Information System (Coins) spending database, which includes 24 million entries on what public money is spent on.
According to the Treasury, the previously-unpublished data is used to produce reports for Parliament and the public, including spending data in the Budget and pre-Budget report. It is also used by the Office for National Statistics, the Treasury said.
An analysis of data from Coins by Regeneration & Renewal reveals that the DCLG spent £28.6 million on "consultancy services" in the 2009/10 financial year.
The largest items of regeneration-related consultancy spending by the department included £4.7 million related to the Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation, and £1.5 million on "implementing planning reform", the database shows.
The analysis also found that the department spent £1.4 million on consultancy services related to "community empowerment", £350,000 on services to do with the Thames Gateway and £315,000 on services related to Growth Areas, New Growth Points and Eco Towns.
Many labels on spending in the Coins database, which is described by the Treasury as "complex", are vague, and raise more questions than they answer.
Stephen Nicol, managing director of consultancy Regeneris Consultancy, said: "It's a bit like looking into a large (area of) fog - you can see objects in it, but you are not sure what they relate to."
Nicol said that the DCLG's spending on consultants was likely to relate to research support, project management and legal advice.
According to the Coins database, £1.8 billion was spent across Whitehall on consultants in 2009/10 - up from £1.5 billion the previous financial year. Last month, chancellor George Osborne pledged to make £1.5 billion of savings this financial year through cuts in "discretionary areas like consultancy and travel costs".
Nicol said the DCLG's spending on consultants was "chicken feed" compared with other departments, such as the Department of Health, which spent more than £480 million on consultancy services in 2009/10, according to Coins. "The DCLG has to think very hard about what it spends its money on," he said. "It certainly isn't throwing money around."
The Coins database's figure of £4.7 million for the DCLG's spending on consultancy services related to the Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation was likely to cover more than spending on consultants by the body itself, said a spokeswoman for the organisation.
She said: "We would suggest that the figure of £4.7 million attributed to the TTGDC covers more than direct expenditure (on consultants) by the development corporation as our figures show £1.5 million for the year ending 2009/10."
Communities minister Baroness Hanham said: "The Government will slash the bloated expenditure on consultants as part of our drive towards significant savings in public spending."
Some DCLG spending on advice, 2009/10
Project/Amount (pounds)
- Community empowerment/1.4m
- Growth Areas, New Growth Points and Eco Towns/315,000
- Homes & Communities Agency/4,000
- Interreg 1.3m
- Implementing planning 1.5m reform
- New Deal for Communities 64,000
- Regeneration strategy 50,000
- Thames Gateway 350,000
- London Thames 349,000 Gateway UDC
- Thurrock Thames 4.7m Gateway UDC
Source: HM Treasury Coins database.
