CORNWALL COUNCIL spent the equivalent of an incredible £186,500 a day – or £23,312 per hour – on consultants and agency staff during a single month.

County Hall bosses spent £5.595 million on consultants and agency staff during August – the most recent month for which figures for spending over £500 are available.

A breakdown shows the bill for consultants alone reached almost £4.2 million – £139,000 a day – while £1.4 million was spent on agency staff.

The cost has increased since the start of the year, when the Cornish Guardian's sister paper the West Briton learnt the council was spending up to £100,000 a day on consultants and agency staff.

The bill has been uncovered as the council looks to scale back subsidies which could lead to a cut in bus services and proposals which could see public toilets closed.

Liberal Democrat group deputy leader Alex Folkes said: "There's always going to be some expertise we need on a short-term basis that we don't have and would be uneconomic to have in the council, but we're seeing far too many people employed as consultants to do ordinary jobs – jobs you could get someone in Cornwall to do on a full-time basis for far less money.

"We've heard many times before that they're only spending what's necessary on consultants and agency staff and they'll bring down the costs, yet they continue to go up."

The West Briton found the council had spent about £100,000 a day on consultants and agency staff in January.

At that time council leader Alec Robertson said the cost would be cut due to new initiatives being undertaken.

Cornwall Council responded to the latest revelations by insisting it had reduced its spending on consultants who were previously paid on a daily rate by delivering the work in-house. However, it still had to use consultants when specialist expertise was required.

"Using these people to provide support on projects as and when required is more cost-effective than employing permanent staff," a spokesman said. "It also avoids recruitment costs.

"All spending on consultants is closely monitored to ensure best value for money, but this will inevitably go up and down depending on the number of major projects the council's involved with at any one time.

"Agency staff are used to manage increased workload in specific areas or to cover sickness or vacant posts. Using agency staff provides the flexibility to address staffing issues on a short-term basis and avoid the added costs of redundancy or redeployment when a project's finished."

The spokesman said a new central system for agency workers had helped save £250,000 and more savings were expected in the months to come. Such spending was now detailed on the council's website, he said.