Nottingham City Council says it will spend an extra £600,000 on a consultancy company to make sure that it becomes a "financially robust" authority. The council recently announced that it had approved the spending of up to £611,916 on PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
That came on top of a spend of up to £500,000 which had already been approved for PwC around a year ago. The company is being paid by Nottingham City Council to support its work on delivering a financial improvement plan.
The council is drawing up such a plan after the Improvement and Assurance Board (IAB) overseeing the authority said improvements were needed in terms of financial management and governance arrangements. The IAB was appointed after issues including the collapse of Robin Hood Energy and the misspending of £40m.
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An announcement is soon expected on whether the Government will go further than allowing the IAB to continue by sending taxpayer-funded commissioners in to run Nottingham City Council. Ahead of that announcement, the authority says its financial improvement plan is "evolving and taking shape" ready for publication this year.
The recently approved extra spending on PwC forms part of this work, with the spending being split into two. The council has approved up to £454,680 for 'Phase 2A' of its plan, whilst up to £157,236 has been approved for 'Phase 2B'.
It comes as the council has also just approved an extra spend of up to £650,000 for more agency workers due to "a sharp rise in agency demand." Councillor Adele Williams, the Deputy Leader of Nottingham City Council, said in regards to the PwC spending: "We are making significant improvements to the way our council operates, but sometimes we don’t have the necessary skills or capacity within the council and so we need to bring in external expertise.
"This latest project is funded from the Financial Resilience Reserve and relates to expert help we need to develop our budget management systems. Once complete, we will have an efficient system in place that provides best value for local taxpayers.
"This is one of a number of improvement initiatives that will see us become a more efficient and financially robust council. As part of this work, we are ensuring that permanent council staff get the right skills and knowledge so that we have our own in-house expertise going forward."
Councillor Andrew Rule, the leader of the Conservative Group at Nottingham City Council, said: "I think we're damned if we do and damned if we don't in terms of this spending because there has been an exodus of staff. What is important is that there is a smooth transition from using consultants to the staff that are left."
In regards to the £650,000 spending on agency staff, which comes on top of the previous £750,000 spend in this area, a Nottingham City Council spokesperson said: "We have retendered for a new managed service provider contract which allows us to engage agency workers in specialist and executive roles, increasing the overall potential spend through this contract which explains some of the increase in value.
"Agency costs for the council have also risen on an operational level in the last year due to pressures in social care, where there is a national shortage with significant difficulties recruiting and retaining social workers and care workers, along with a pressurised health and social care system and seasonal challenges resulting in workforce absences. The increase from £750k to £1.4m reflects the requirement for agency workers within the overall value of the previous contract."
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