The public sector use of consultants has grown at an increasing rate over the past few years and has been subject to critical coverage by the media.

To meet the challenges of continued improvement in service delivery in a constantly shifting environment it is likely that local authorities will need to continue to purchase professional services from external suppliers.

With an estimated expenditure of £170m across London in 2005/06 local authorities have a responsibility to ensure that this level of expenditure provides value for money.

To address this area and help local authorities reduce spend and improved results from the purchase of consultants the LCE funded the Professional Service Providers Project.

Led by Islington Council, working with LB Ealing, LB Lambeth, LB Merton and LB Redbridge this project has built on the products developed in Phase 1 (led by City of London and LB Hounslow) and produced further products that will help local authorities gain improved results and value for money.

• understanding how much, what and which professional service providers an organisation uses and what the requirement will be in the future;
• making a proper assessment of whether internal resources can be used instead of consultants;
• collecting and sharing adequate and appropriate information on professional service providers to improve their buying and negotiating position and understand what value they bring;
• actively engage with key professional service providers to understand how they and the market works and help suppliers better understand the local authorities business and operational requirements; and
• build internal capacity by planning and carrying out transfer of skills from professional service providers to internal staff.

This guide supplements the Consultancy Commissioning Toolkit and provides pragmatic guidance that helps to focus on and specify what results need to be delivered.

  Consultancy Brokerage Model
(18pp, 226KB)

This provides local authorities with an approach to achieving better results and improved value from commissioning consultancy. The proposed approach is phased in its implementation with each stage building on the previous.

»Consultancy Knowledge Centre

This provides local authorities with the capability to share information and data on consultancy assignments that have been completed

 Buying Consultancy Services Workshop

(2pp, 59KB)