Tag: TMI Systems

Transformation with V4 Services and Verto in Peterborough

Many will remember that the subject of consultants has been rumbling on here, ever since Cllr Mike Fletcher asked some difficult questions back in January 2010 and later. If this means nothing to you, and you’d like to find out more, here is as good a place as any to start.

If you’d rather have a quick summary, here it is. Peterborough City Council have spent many millions per year on consultants, in order to achieve claimed savings of many more millions. Others dispute the benefits. What follows is one person’s interpretation of the situation.
Continue reading “Transformation with V4 Services and Verto in Peterborough”

Use of Consultants – Council Statement

08:35 Friday 25th March 2011
Peterborough Breakfast Show BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

ANDY GALL: Yesterday we brought you the outcome of the inquiry into whether Peterborough City Council is spending too much money on consultants. The three-man panel made 31 recommendations to the Scrutiny Committee, and called for the process of hiring consultants to be made more transparent. PCC couldn’t put someone up to talk to us, because the report will be discussed at a Cabinet meeting in June, but they did send a statement.

VO: “Peterborough City Council has some of the best controls in the country for managing and monitoring its use of consultants. We are already implementing many of the recommendations in the report as part of our drive for greater transparency, and ensuring we are always providing the best value for money for our taxpayers. Over the past 4 years we’ve been able to take £68 million out of our budget because of this work. We’d like to thank the consultants who’ve worked for us in the past, and those who continue to work for us, for sharing their expertise with our staff to enable us to improve the skills and knowledge we have within our own workforce.”

ANDY GALL: And in today’s Evening Telegraph you can get Council Leader Marco Cereste’s thoughts and comments on the report.

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Interesting Times

Council Calendar:
7pm 16th March 2011: Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee
7pm 23rd March 2011 Sustainable Growth Scrutiny Committee – EXTRAORDINARY.

Report on consultants delayed.
THE results of a study into Peterborough City Council’s spending on consultancy have been delayed until next month.
An independent task group of councillors has been reviewing the amount spent on consultants since it was set up in March. (2010)
The group had planned to present its findings at the Sustainable Growth Scrutiny committee last night but this has been put back because the review has been expanded as “other lines of enquiry have been identified”.
Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Thu Feb 03 2011

Peterborough Childrens’ Services Poor

John Richards came on the radio this morning to explain why OFSTED gave Peterborough City Council a “poor” rating for its Childrens Services.

Here are the extracts from the OFSTED report that relate to the failings:
Continue reading “Peterborough Childrens’ Services Poor”

Where Peterborough Council Spent the Money

The next post will be delayed until this evening (edit: make that midnight) due to constant power cuts in Peterborough.

Something to be going on with is a list of all payments made by Peterborough City Council during the year which seems to be 2008/9
Continue reading “Where Peterborough Council Spent the Money”

Peterborough City Council and Consultants Part Three – for research purposes only

The relationship between Peterborough City Council and consultants is becoming a cause for concern for some councillors. This page examines the latest announcements.

Continued from Part Two

The following documents all dated 20 October 2009 are in the public domain:

1. Peterborough regulates spend on consultants. Link
2. Realising the benefits of business transformation. Link
3. Creating a value-adding human resources service. Link
4. Transforming the way we work to cut cost and improve performance: . Link

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In 2008 Peterborough City Council established a professional services partnership (PSP), to consolidate and regulate its spending on consultancy.
Consultants “landed and expanded”, often taking roles that should be filled internally.
Consultancy was poorly and often non-compliantly procured. Continue reading “Peterborough City Council and Consultants Part Three – for research purposes only”

Peterborough City Council and Consultants – for research purposes only

There has been a certain amount of discussion recently about the amount of money that Peterborough City Council have been spending on consultants.  Probably the best way for the council to answer these questions would be to set out the timescale of their involvement with consultancy firms. No-one wants to criticise unfairly, but ratepayers are entitled to answers where questions arise in the media.

It is possible to discover some information from publicly available documents. Here are some items of interest, or at least relevance: Continue reading “Peterborough City Council and Consultants – for research purposes only”