Peterborough Children’s Services in Crisis: Consultants Named

07:07 Friday 25th November 2011
Peterborough Breakfast Show
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

PAUL STAINTON: Peterborough City Council’s Children’s Services has a new Director, looking after the department. It was confirmed yesterday a super-consultant is to be brought in to try and improve it, which  was criticised by Ofsted in September. Now one city councillor is questioning how truly successful consultants have been when tackling the same job in the past. Let’s speak to Cllr Mike Fletcher. Morning Mike.
MIKE FLETCHER: Good morning Paul. ..
PAUL STAINTON: Now how many consultants have had a go at Children’s Services in say the last three or four years? How many different companies have had a go at sorting it out. Continue reading “Peterborough Children’s Services in Crisis: Consultants Named”

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.

Related Posts

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”