Merton Council spent £1.8m on consultants in one

Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed experts, who charged between £1,000 and £1,800 a day, were drafted in from four of the country’s most expensive firms.

Council officers claimed they helped the cash-strapped authority save nearly £3.5m without cutting frontline services. But critics are furious over the level of expenditure from the public purse.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “We pay a fortune to senior managers at the council, so it is absurd they are spending yet more money on consultants.

“The council needs to realise it can no longer just spend, spend, spend.”

Merton’s opposition Labour leader, Councillor Stephen Alambritis, said: “The consultants have only been drafted in because councillors won’t or are unable to sit down and go through the budget line-by-line with officers - it’s the job they’re elected to do.

“They shouldn't have to pay consultants this obscene amount to do it for them.”

But Merton’s leader, Councillor David Williams, said the consultants represented value for money, helping the authority cut council tax for the first time in 16 years.

He said the contract with Deloitte had cost just over £300,000 but saved £2.5m, adding: “This is a one-off expenditure that will generate savings year after year and that’s why we don’t put these consultants on our pay roll.

“We [councillors] do pour through budgets line-by-line but this is about looking at our expenditure in a different way.”

Five years ago the council spent £357,000 on consultancy fees compared to £1,536,000 for the last financial year.

Under the new budget, the council’s graffiti removal funds have been halved, £146,000 has been shaved from the library budget and 15 beds scrapped from the authority’s provision of elderly care facilities.

Merton Horticultural Show will no longer receive funding, and the cash office in the civic centre will open for just four hours a day.