Cash-strapped Cornwall Council spent nearly £6 million in two months paying consultants and agency staff, new figures have revealed.

The council, which recently approved plans to make £110 million worth of savings, is spending just under £70,000 per day on consultants, as well as more than £27,500 daily on temporary staff.

The figures lift the veil on council expenditure for the first time, after local government secretary Eric Pickles ordered all authorities to publish details of every expenditure over £500.

The council said consultants have played a valuable role in saving the taxpayer money, and say its consultants bill – which, over two months, is more than four times that for Devon – is being reduced.

But campaigners have said money is being "wasted".

Several thousand entries are listed on spread sheets published on Cornwall Council's website, which reveal the authority spent £2,396,002.08 on consultants in December, and a further £1,777,744.30 the following month.

The two-month total includes five six-figure payments to consultants – including one of £850,294 to the doomed South West Regional Development Agency, listed to be spent on the county's flagship Tremough Innovation Centre, designed to attract multi-million-pound economic growth in Cornwall.

In the same two-months Devon County Council made just two, five-figure payments to consultants – the highest being £151,303.68 to legal firm Burges Salmon LLP. In total, its receipts for consultants over £500 was £992,019.31.

Spends on agency staff also figure heavily in both authorities' recorded outgoings. Cornwall Council forecasts to lose about 2,000 workers in the next four years, with an estimated 500 employees expected to be made redundant.

But that has not stopped the authority spending more than £1.7 million on temporary staff in December and January.

According to the council's own figures, receipts for agency staff over £500 totalled £1,126,028 in December, and £578,416.50 in January.

These include six, six-figure payments to Comensura, a Luton-based company which, rather than provide its own staff, scours a bank of temporary workers with suitable qualifications to fit the council's needs.

By comparison Devon County Council's spending on agency staff was about one-eighth of Cornwall's. In a statement, Cornwall Council said the authority used "a software system to manage the administration of the recruitment process, enabling the council to make a single payment to Comensura rather than making individual payments to a number of different agencies". It said this approach was expected to save "more than £2 million over the next three years".

Council leader Alec Robertson said: "We have nothing to hide." He added the way the information was presented meant the term "consultants" was used to describe a range of organisations carrying out "vital work" for Cornwall.

He said: "The organisations referred to here offer expertise in specific areas.

"We use external companies for specialist type of work, this is cost-effective and saves the taxpayer money. Bringing in people on a project by project basis rather than employing them permanently will help save millions of pounds off council tax bills."

The council's own catalogue of expenditure also throws up some eyebrow-raising payments. The limited scope of the documents presented on every authority's websites offer only scant details about payments over £500.

For example Cornwall Council lists paying £1,000 for "Scary Little Girls" – a Cornish- and London-based drama group which provided pre-Christmas street entertainment in St Austell.

John O'Connell, research director of the campaign group TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "These are big bills for taxpayers to foot for just two months.

"Of course outside expertise may be necessary at times in specific fields like engineering and construction but the local authority has a planning department with well-paid bosses heading it up.

"Taxpayers already pay out huge sums for these executives, and they claim to be worth these salaries, so it will worry taxpayers that they are expected to fund such big monthly bills for consultants as well. Money is being wasted somewhere."