Education consultants were paid up to £500 a day by the Vale of Glamorgan council, it has been revealed after Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood’s victory to end secrecy over the payments.
The Information Commissioner ruled in May that the authority should release full details on the consultants’ costs following an investigation and a 25-page judgement by Assistant Commissioner Anne Jones. It has now done so.
Leanne Wood, the Plaid AM for South Wales Central, had lodged an appeal under the Freedom of Information Act after the Vale council, while disclosing the £46,000 bill for employing two education consultants in 2008-09, refused to say how many days each of them was employed for and what each of them was paid, citing “commercial interests of other parties”.
Since the decision the Vale of Glamorgan council’s Chief Executive John Maitland Evans has revealed that one of the education consultants received £29,000 for 58.5 days work in 2009-10. This was on top of £34,294 covering 68.5 days paid out in 2008-09.
Leanne Wood said: “I welcome this belated decision by the Vale of Glamorgan council to release this information. But it should not have been necessary for me to pursue this matter through the Information Commissioner.
“I hope that the council get the message loud and clear that the public has a right to know how it is spending money whether it is on consultancy services, as in this case, or other projects and services.
“I trust the Vale of Glamorgan council will, in future, fully embrace the Freedom of Information Act in an open and transparent manner and not try to avoid providing information. My original request was motivated by a public desire to have a complete and full picture of how public money was being spent and certainly not by a desire to find out people’s bank details as was erroneously suggested by the authority.”
In her judgement Anne Jones had said: “The council did not provide the Commissioner with any firm arguments to support its view that the disclosure would be likely to prejudice the consultants’ or the council’s own interests.
“There is a strong public interest in transparency in relation to the use of public money and ensuring that public authorities are achieving the best price for work that it outsourced to external companies.”
