South Wales Evening Post - 3 November 2005
Swansea's massive consultants bill of almost £4 million could be even bigger than first thought, it has emerged.
The council has confirmed figures included in a freedom of information document given to the Post do not tell the full story. It said the report did not include every consultant's charge for the 14-month period and that further sums could be added on to the huge £3,943,963 total.
A council spokesman explained that the report had been compiled within the time and £450 cost limits under the authority's freedom of information regulations which meant that the figures put forward were not a complete picture.
The spokesman said: "If you require any further information then this would have to be charged for and I would expect that this could take a further 72 working hours which would cost approximately £2,000."
The information given to the Post contained a number of six figure sums paid to companies and a list of 44 firms in a variety of industries from public relations and legal advice to property and public art.
The Labour Party claims the figure of almost £4 million could be much higher still - up to half as much again - with a number of well known engineering, commercial and PR consultants which have worked for the council in the past 14 months not mentioned.
A Labour spokesman said: "From what we can see, the sketchy response from the council's PR department is something of a dog's breakfast.
"For example, how can you state a company has received half a million pounds of public money in fees without giving an idea of what the sum was spent on?"
He added that Davis Langdon Everest, the firm advising on the new Swansea Leisure Centre, had not been included.
But this was explained by Rene Kinzett, a spokesman for the Lib Dem, Independent and Conservative coalition, who said that the cost of bringing DLE onboard was part of the £25 million leisure centre budget and that just under £5 million of that was being spent on a variety of professional fees for things like consultants, legal services, architects and others.
He added: "The £4 million quoted in the freedom of information response is around 0.5 per cent of the council's overall annual budget.
"I would imagine if you were to ask a private company what they spent on consultants it would be a lot more than 0.5 per cent of their annual budget."
