Dear resident, can you stump up for frontline services (while we spend £1m on advisers)?

12 April 2012

A council spent more than £1 million on advisers to help cut costs - despite planning to send "begging letters" to its wealthiest residents in a bid to raise money for frontline services.

Camden also paid out £3 million for temporary staff. The borough is facing severe expenditure cuts and more than 1,000 permanent staff face redundancy,

Figures published on the council website show that in October and November, £1,196,700 was spent on advisers to help with tasks such as finding savings. Of the £3,207,450 spent on agency staff, £2,893,327 went to a single firm, Hays recruitment.

Town hall chiefs are considering asking wealthy locals to help pay for services such as schools and libraries. Among the possible targets are bankers, including Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio, Goldman Sachs vice-chairman Michael Sherwood, and N M Rothschild chief Nigel Higgins.

Camden, which includes Primrose Hill, Regents Park and Hampstead, has the fourth richest residents of any borough in Britain. The council has predicted a funding shortfall of £80 million to £100 million over the next three years. George Binette, local branch secretary at trade union Unison, said: "This kind of spend on consultants is ethically unjustified and economically dubious. We've been arguing for a long time against the high levels of agency staff, a high proportion of which have been there for 12 months or more."

Former Tory councillor and Hampstead resident Chris Philp said: "It is shocking that they are asking people to make donations when they are wasting money on consultants. Enough money has been spent in one month to save the whole libraries budget."

Theo Blackwell, the Labour-run council's cabinet member for finance, said: "We want to start by setting up a conversation with the richer residents about how they might be able to help out our schools and libraries in very much the same way the Government is asking people to donate to the arts."

When asked about the cash being spent on advisers, he told the Standard: "Don't bother calling Camden again."

A spokeswoman for the council said it had been reducing its spend on agency workers and consultants.

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