Coventry City Council is planning to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on contracts with global accountancy firms.
Rather than spending the money with accountants in Coventry, the councils have enlisted worldwide companies Deloitte and KMPG for financial advice and tax advice.
They also have a partnership arrangement with PriceWaterhouseCoopers for advice on how to make multi-million pound council savings.
It is estimated that the total bill for the accountancy firms’ services could reach £20million by 2015.
Questions have been raised regarding why such expensive work is being out sourced to private consultants when the council has finance officers among its 15,500 workforce.
As of March 2012, £8.8 million had been paid to PwC as the council needed to cut 1000 jobs and find £140m budget savings by 2015.
Chris West, finance director said: “The consultants on the Financial Advisors Framework Contract are only commissioned where there is specialist knowledge or expertise required which is not available in the council.
“For example, in the current financial climate it would not be cost effective for the council to employ a specialist tax advisor and the framework is used to “buy in” that specialist advice as and when it is required.”
West said that the £20million was just an estimate for potential work.