Consultancy costs: Bay of Plenty Regional Council reveals spending on suppliers

Bay of Plenty Regional Council has spent $7m on consultants as part of $124m in payments for services.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council has spent more than $7 million on consultants in the past year.

A report on the council’s supplier payments over $50,000 for the year ending June 30 shows a breakdown of all payments to organisations for services including bus services, land management, pest management, IT software and consultancy.

The total spend on suppliers was $124.3m, with the highest individual amount — $26.6m — being paid to NZ Bus for its delivery of the council’s public transport service.

Another $7.1m was spent on 32 different consultants. More payments were made to consultants than any other type of creditor in the report.

Engineering consultant company Beca received the most money for its service, $1.28m, with most other consultant payments ranging from $51,000 to $620,289.

A separate $12,646 was donated in koha to local marae, trusts and churches, with payments ranging from $40 to just over $1600.

The report is due to be presented to the council’s Risk and Assurance Committee when it meets on Thursday.

The report, authorised by corporate general manager Mat Taylor, says it provides a total spend per supplier for the past year when the spend was greater than $50,000 excluding goods and services tax.

It does not show where revenue had been received to offset payments.

In April this year, when annual reports and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act were used to discover how much the regional council, Tauranga City Council and Western Bay of Plenty District Council spent on consultants, the Bay of Plenty Times reported Local Government New Zealand president Stuart Crosby said there were often valid reasons for consultant spending.

Crosby, who is also a Bay of Plenty regional councillor, said examples included councils needing a specific set of skills not necessarily available among staff, a need to avoid a conflict of interest in some cases such as regulation of a council asset, or that staff’s time-dependent contracts could be expiring during the time needed for a certain project.

A consultant was sometimes cheaper than hiring someone with those skill sets full-time, or could temporarily fill a role the council was struggling to recruit for.

The council spent just over $10.28m on consultants for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years.

The largest payment from that period was to PricewaterhouseCoopers, of $380,000.

Crosby said it was largely up to elected members and council chief executives to determine how frequently consultants were used.

For the 2020/21 and 2021/22 years, the Tauranga City Council spent $40.9m on consultants and the Western Bay council spent $5.9m.

The regional council’s report, and breakdown of how much it has spent for services, is available on its website in the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.

Kiri Gillespie is an assistant news director and a senior journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, specialising in local politics and city issues. She was a finalist for the Voyager Media Awards Regional Journalist of the Year in 2021.