The title of ‘consultant’ is pretty vague; anyone with a morsel of knowledge in a specific sector can call themselves one. Indeed, disgraced former leader of Glasgow City Council, Steven Purcell, has created a new business called Twenty Ten Consultancy, named so after ‘the most dramatic year of his life’ during which problems with drug and alcohol abuse brought him much attention and caused him to lose his post. How many prospective clients there are waiting to absorb his pearls of wisdom remains to be seen. But with Defra alone reporting spends of over £25 million a year on consultancy services, it’s clearly a massive market.

In 2007, a parliamentary report revealed that the public sector ‘wastes more than £500 million a year on the unnecessary and poor use of consultants’. But is this because consultants are essentially a frivolous use of tightening budgets, or because those employing them are ill-informed as to how to best glean value from them?

Joe Papineschi, Director of Eunomia Research and Consulting, believes it all comes down to expectation, with the client playing the vital role in the procurement process. “There are huge amounts of money spent on consultancy projects which you can see from the outset are unlikely to result in anything happening, and quite often that’s because the brief isn’t addressing the real issue”, he says. “This can be a big problem. So, if we think there’s a flaw in the brief, or that the brief isn’t answering the key issue, we’ll tell them.”

Indeed, Dr Adam Read, Knowledge Leader for environmental consultancy AEA, confirms this. “Say you want to achieve 20 per cent uplift of tonnage in one area, but only specify in the brief that you want to talk to X number of people about it, a consultancy could win the contract at a much lower price, hit the specified objective but only achieve 10 per cent uplift of tonnage. The client realises they’ve set the wrong objective and will end up having to pay another consultant to achieve the right one. This is not efficient and there’s no value for money here.”

Value. This is the certainly the buzzword surrounding consultants at the moment. Where once they thrived in a boom market that was expanding due to new technologies, a spotlight on recycling and an increased awareness of waste, cuts in spending throughout the economy mean that their focus is now on efficiency, optimisation and obtaining ‘value for money’. But how to define this in the context of procuring a consultant?

“Something that puts a lot of people off are the hourly rates that consultants charge, which look expensive compared to what they imagine an in-house local authority officer costs”, explains Papineschi. “But actually, the reality is if you take into account the overheads and on-costs of employing a senior member of staff to do something on an hourly rate, it doesn’t look as uncompetitive as it does on first glance.” Furthermore, an inherent advantage of paid-for advice is that people are more likely to value it and give it greater weight. “If you get something for free, you don’t tend to value it”, says Papineschi. “So there’s an element of: ‘We’ve paid for this, therefore we expect it to be good and we expect it to be right.’ There’s something of an issue with the free advice days provided by Defra and WRAP, as local authorities might perceive them as trying to promote a certain message, or not thoroughly take it on board because they’ve not personally invested in it.”

But with an appropriate brief, such advice can deliver very serious, often recurring, savings. Papineschi claims: “We did a lot of work with the Somerset Waste Partnership and delivered some really big improvements in the way the service is managed. Our fees for the whole project were something like £180,000, which was a one-off cost. They’re now reaping savings of £1.7 million annually.”

Of course, while consultants have a vital role to play in large-scale, one-off projects – as Read says, “you hire a consultant to ride shot-gun throughout a lengthy process, to make sure nothing undue happens” – they can still deliver value and prove just as useful in a slighter context.

Lee Marshall, Senior Manager for Policy and Waste at Powys County Council, says that one of the biggest benefits consultants can bring is, simply, time. “There’s a perception that consultants are brought in to deal with local authority officers’ shortcomings or inexperience”, he says. “But what’s often the case is that in-house staff just don’t have the time to do a particular project.” Or, frequently, officers have not been trained to have the commercial mindset that consultants can offer. Furthermore, consultants can prove indispensible when it comes to negotiations and proposals between officers and members, and between partnerships. “By using a consultant you’ve got a more neutral party that’s working objectively, so everyone involved feels confident that they’ve got a fair and balanced sounding board for their ideas.”

However, there does exist the old joke that, as Read quips: “A consultant will borrow your watch to tell you the time.” So if consultants are able to provide such value, as demonstrated in the Somerset Waste Partnership example, why are they subject to such bad rap?

“Well, there’s an image of consultants talking an alien management speak that isn’t really grounded in reality”, says Papineschi. “And yes, there are firms out there with business models that focus on getting with clients with small projects and expanding them to levels not previously considered. Or sometimes the same firm will give two authorities very different advice in similar circumstances, where there shouldn’t be grounds for doing so. This would suggest that there are firms that will effectively tell the client what they want to hear. So those stereotypes do exist.”

Indeed, Marshall tells a story of a similarly rogue-like consultancy. “I’ve heard of stories where documents have obviously been cut and pasted and they’ve left a different authority’s name in there. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the advice in there isn’t valid – part of the reason you’re hiring them is to benefit from their previous experience – but nonetheless if I received something like that I wouldn’t be best pleased.”

However, the keys to a successful procurement of a reputable consultant, Marshall believes, are time and management. “For the partnership to work, you have to be prepared to put in a bit of effort in managing them”, he explains. “Look at their track record, consider how they’re approaching your brief – we’re always impressed by bids that look forward, rather than dwelling on what they’ve done in the past – and recognise that while they’re there to help you, they themselves might come up against blocks and barriers, and there should be someone in-house available to help them overcome those. Be clear with your brief and future plans, and the consultant will provide value for money.”

Ultimately though, consultancies are commercially driven, and local authorities must remember that when procuring one. As Read notes: “We undertake these projects not for the sake of research, or from any ethical stance, but because people need a solution and we are able to provide one. Consultancies are commercial operations, and you get what you pay for.”