County councillors have told the company that advised KCC over its investments in Icelandic banks it must answer their questions about the affair.

It comes after the company, Butlers, declined to attend a cross-party meeting at County Hall today and failed to respond to a series of written questions sent to them by backbenchers.

Members of KCC’s all-party policy scrutiny committee have now given Butlers until Monday to respond to their questions about the £50million the authority is trying to recover from three Icelandic banks.

Butlers has promised to do so and explained it had been unable to put together information in time for the meeting.

However, that failed to impress opposition Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Trudy Dean.

She said: "I am personally amazed they are not willing to come and explain themselves to the largest local authority they represent and which has the largest potential losses. The reputation of the county council is being called into question."

Meanwhile, county finance chiefs have rubbished claims by a leading local government consultant that KCC got into difficulties over its Icelandic investments because it took advice from only one credit rating agency.

Howard Knight told a committee of MPs investigating the issue of councils’ investments that one of the reasons Kent had so much at risk was because it only took advice from a single rating agency.

He also said he was "astonished" that KCC employed no specialist Treasury management staff with expertise on investments.

KCC finance director Lynda McMullan said that was factually incorrect as the authority had always relied on advice provided by Butlers that was based on information from three credit rating agencies