Kingston Council spends millions of pounds on specialist consultants in a single month, including ones to advise staff how to work better with civil servants.

Following new guidelines from the Government's Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, the council published a breakdown of every payment made to suppliers and service providers for June and July.

For June 2010, the figures showed Kingston's biggest bills were paid to street maintenance and waste management - £2.3m to Viridor, £800,000 to Veolia, £431,000 to Quadron, and more than £160,000 to RJ Dance.

It also revealed nearly £400,000 was spent on fees paid to 24 different recruitment consultants that month, as well as £350,000 to IT consultants.

There were also payments to smaller consultancies, including AHA Consultancy, which advises on leadership and on how councillors and unelected officers could improve their relationships.

A pamphlet on its website said: "Each authority has a unique combination of politicians and managers with varied backgrounds, values, capabilities and views.

"They have rarely chosen to work with one another. Yet, for the sake of the community, they must make this relationship work effectively."

Almost £300,000 was paid to 130 anonymous individuals, who the council claimed consisted primarily of landlords and foster carers.

Total spending for one month equalled about £17m for June, although some of the 2,400 payments were made in May.

A council spokesman said: "To ensure personal information is protected Kingston will exclude some items of expenditure from the published lists. The main exclusions will be personal, commercially sensitive or confidential data.

"Examples are payments to foster carers, direct payments of care budgets to clients and payments to private landlords for housing clients."

Councillor Rolson Davies, lead member for finance, said: "Kingston Council is committed to providing transparent services and providing residents with detailed information about our budgets and expenditure.

"But because the Secretary of State has not published a code of practice, all local authorities will need to make individual decisions as to how we present the information."