OPPOSITION leaders and taxpayers’ groups have hit out after it emerged Worcestershire County Council spent almost £1 million on private consultants’ fees last year.

An investigation by your Worcester News has revealed a total of £976,633 was paid out by the council for about 100 different consultancy exercises in the 2007/08 financial year.

County Hall is trying to make £25 million in savings, and recently announced a series of controversial cutbacks including the closure of a disabled care centre in Pershore and the scrapping of hot lunches for people in sheltered housing.

Meanwhile, the council has been paying for advice on scores of issues including how to improve transport in Worcester, uses for Hartlebury Castle and how to score highly in Government inspections.

The Conservative-run council insists expert advice is often essential, and that the spend is only a small part of its overall budget.

But opposition leaders fear a “consultancy culture” is emerging at County Hall.

Labour group leader John Buckley said: “There’s a view that as soon as they want to do anything, they immediately go out and get some consultants.

“I do accept there’s sometimes a good case if you don’t have the expertise. But we’ve seen areas where consultants have been brought in for the wrong reasons.”

Coun Buckley highlighted spending on ‘pre-inspection reports’ as one area of concern – paying for advice to help the council achieve high scores in Government inspections. Last year, £14,500 was paid to Tribal Consulting for advice before an audit of the council’s housing programme for vulnerable people.

“You need to ask why, if we have to get all these consultants in for advice, we are paying our top officers so much,” Coun Buckley added.

His concerns were echoed by Fiona McEvoy of the Worcestershire Taxpayers’ Alliance, who said: “The county council really needs to assess the need for all these consultants, rather than just bringing them in a every possible opportunity and spending such extortionate amounts of money.”

But the council’s Tory cabinet member for finance, Adrian Hardman, said employing consultants was essential for any council.

He said: “While this figure looks large, you must set it against the context of the council’s budgets of £287 million of revenue and £100 million of capital expenditure – it is less than a quarter of one per cent of our total budgets.

“It specifically relates to people we have brought in to carry out specialist pieces of work – these are not management consultants to tell us how to run the council.

“If we did not employconsultants, we would have no other option but to take on more staff, who we would have to make redundant once the piece of work had finished.”