Croydon Council plans to spend £6 million of our money in the coming year on what it calls in councilspeak a “Consultancy Framework”.
According to confidential planning documents obtained by Inside Croydon, the council describes this as “New provision required for vehicle to deliver packages of Consultancy support”.
In plain English, that is another £6 million spent in order to have a system in place to look after the spending of the £20 million which the council wants to fork out on hiring outside consultants and temporary staff this year. This at a time when public services have been cut across the board.
Last week, we revealed Croydon Council’s confidential plans to spend £20 million on consultants and temp staff in 2012, matching the amount spent on expensive consultants in 2011.
We also uncovered the plan to spend a further £900,000 of public money on furnishing the council’s shiny new headquarters building.
The £20 million in 2012 is for what councilspeak describes as “Temporary Staffing Managed Service Provider”. That’s a temp agency to most people.
This is rarely a cost-effective, efficient, or cheaper way of staffing council services. Last year, Inside Croydon revealed the £765-per-day paid to hire an interim executive to work on procurement at the council.
The extravagant spending on hirings comes when Croydon chief executive Jon Rouse has spent the past two years axing established and experienced staff from the pay-roll.
Sources inside Taberner House suggest that some staff who have been made redundant, after receiving their severance deals, have been hired on a temporary or consultancy basis, often to do a very similar job.
Of course, Inside Croydon put the matter of this spending to Rouse and to Mike Fisher, the leader of the Conservative group that is supposed to be in control of Croydon’s spendthrift council.
Unusually for such requests, our council servants have on this occasion failed to refer our enquiries immediately to a (costly for Council Tax-payers) Freedom of Information process.
They simply have failed to comment on their justification for such spending.
Croydon Council’s motto? “Proud to Serve”.
Or should that be, “Proud to Serve Themselves”?
- Inside Croydon: Comment and analysis on Croydon that does not come from Redhill. Post your comments on this article below. If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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