The REAL Cost of Consultants

“A consultant. You ask him the time, he borrows your watch and tells you.”

Local authorities in Scotland spent in excess of £67m on consultants last year, a rise of more than 30% on the previous year. The figures show East Renfrewshire spent £5,000 on secret shopping exercises, while Aberdeenshire spent £44,500 on teaching creativity, motivation skills, team-building, leadership and entrepreneurial skills to school pupils and a further £118,000 on weather forecasting consultants. Falkirk Council spent £3,000 on consultants over school timetables, while North Lanarkshire spent almost £1,000 to find out students’ perceptions of where they live.

I would like to know how consultants can be held to account when their advice and recommendations don’t live up to their promises. Many of them have a template mentality and hardly ever have a grasp of local issues.

For example in Dumbarton we are familiar with the EDAW consultancy which recommended the current traffic management scheme and promised to transform the town within five years. The most recent use of consultants by WDC was of Edinburgh firm Broadway Maylan who drew up a masterplan for Dumbarton. Just why we need another masterplan barely ten years after the last one I don’t know. Perhaps a team of consultants will be hired to tell us.