High-paid consultants will advise at County Hall in Maidstone

by political editor Paul Francis

Kent County Council is to push ahead with a controversial decision to appoint consultants at a cost of £5.4million to tell it how to make savings in adult care.

The Conservative-led administration said the decision to appoint Newton Europe as social services consultants will save it tens of millions of pounds in the long term.

The amount of money KCC spends on consultants has become a key election issue ahead of polling day on May 2.

It has now emerged Newton Europe was paid £30,000 by the county council to assess if savings identified by social services chiefs in this year's budget could be made.

KCC leader Paul Carter (Con), pictured right, and cabinet member for social care Cllr Graham Gibbens (Con) faced sustained questioning about the contract from backbench county councillors.

At a meeting of the council's cabinet scrutiny committee, opposition Labour spokesman Cllr Les Christie said the value of the contract meant KCC would be appointing 12 consultants on salaries of £200,000 each.

"That is far more than we paid Katherine Kerswell [former managing director of the council] before we decided she was too expensive to continue with."

He questioned how the council had identified £18m savings from its adult care budget this year - and then needed consultants to tell it how to make them.

"How did you arrive at a figure of £18m if you did not know how they could be found?"

KCC leader Paul Carter said the authority had arrived at a "reasonable" figure, but emphasised Newton Europe's role would be to deliver much more than £18m in savings.

"We are appointing consultants to deliver up to £40m of savings not just this year but every year. Social services is much more complex than other services, which is why we needed an independent review of the deliverability of these substantial savings."

Liberal Democrat spokesman Cllr Rob Bird said KCC should be cautious about "pressure selling."

"If someone came and offered to double glaze your windows and said they had a crack team in place, that would be pressure selling. I do not think we should succumb to that when this amount of money is involved."