Pandemic pushes Gov's consultancy bill to £26m in six months

Wednesday 10 February 2021

The Government spent nearly £26m on consultants in the first half of 2020 - spending they say was driven by lockdown, and strict border restrictions preventing them from attracting permanent employees.

The spending was revealed in a new report on the use of consultants, fixed-term employees and agency staff.

It showed that between January and June 2020, the Government spent £25.5 million on such contracts - £1.2 million more than between July and December 2019.

The largest chunk of the consultancy bill (£8.2m) was spent on services provided by a supplier, while £3.8m was spent on services provided by specific individuals.

£6.9m was spent on fixed-term contracts for employees at or below 'Civil Service Grade 15.4' salary (£49 per hour) and just over half-a-million on those above that grade. 

An additional £2.3m was spent on local agency staff and £2.7m on local and UK nursing agency costs. Finally, just over one million was spent on social worker agency costs. 

Travel expenses for consultants averaged £42,918 a month, meaning the Government spent £257,508 over the six-month period. 

Pictured: Travel costs averaged £42,918 a month.

The highest consultancy spend overall was with EY, with the total sitting between £2.2m and £2.6m. The majority of that spend was linked to a contract worth up to £1.25m for work helping the Government on its drive to make savings of £100m.

The DMW Group Limited received the largest single contract worth up to £1.5m for work on the 'Integrated Technology Solution' - a plan to get all the Government's systems to talk to each other.

PwC also received a large contract worth over a million for work on ‘Our Hospital’. 

Meanwhile, details of two items of expenditure related to the Government's £500m borrowing in response to the pandemic were redacted from the document "for commercial reasons."

Overall, the Chief Operating Officer's department was the biggest spender with £3.9m - more than double the amount of the next biggest spender, Health and Community Services with £1.5m.

In terms of individuals, the largest bills were for the Our Hospital Project Director, the Interim Director of HR for the Health Department, and an 'Employee Relations Specialist' - each of whom received between £100,000 and £124,999 over the period.

Pictured: The Our Hospital Project Director was among the Government's highest paid consultants.

Justifying the expenditure in the report, the Government said that lockdowns in the UK and Europe as well as strict border restrictions in Jersey had “inhibited [its] ability to attract permanent and fixed-term employees”.

As a result, they said some contracts and interim arrangements had to be extended until “more favourable conditions exist for advertising, recruiting, and onboarding fixed-term appointees”.

The Government also said there were a “significant number of specific projects” that had required additional specialist and technical expertise, driving up consultancy costs. These included the Our Hospital project, ‘Integrated Technology Solution’, the £100m savings programme and covid. 

The Treasury was also reported to have suffered “difficult recruitment period” and had therefore been in need of additional support in respect of financing and closure of accounts.

Ministers were also described as needing expert support as part of the island’s health, wellbeing, fiscal and economic response to the pandemic. 

The majority of this “short-term resourcing for specialisms” was drawn from core staff, whose roles then had to be filled. But the Government said that due to “a lack of experience in the island” and the roles being temporary in nature, the best “support” was deemed to be the use of contractors. 

“This was a scenario played out across other jurisdictions and so the marketplace was crowded and Jersey did well to bring in the support it has during the pandemic,” the Government said.