Lord Storey – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the The Lord Chairman of Committees
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2015-10-22.
To ask the Chairman of Committees how many consultants have been employed in the House of Lords in the last three years; and what has been the cost of each firm or independent consultant.
Lord Laming
Payments for the last three financial years are as follows:
|
Firm |
2012-13 £ |
2013-14 £ |
2014-15 £ |
Work undertaken |
|
Beamans Ltd |
– |
– |
31,050 |
Costs related to a pay and grading review |
|
BHBi Consultancy Ltd |
14,800 |
– |
– |
Audit of an ongoing capital project |
|
Bostock Marketing Group |
23,025 |
– |
20,238 |
Costs of the independently-managed Member and staff surveys |
|
Capita Business Services |
– |
6,913 |
– |
Support for an equal pay audit |
|
Catering Consultancy Bureau |
– |
6,128 |
13,662 |
Branding project for Catering and Retail Services (CRS) outlets and delivery of communications workshops |
|
Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply |
– |
23,118 |
– |
Support for a review of procurement services |
|
Government Actuary’s Department |
5,400 |
5,000 |
7,500 |
Annual accounting valuation of the House of Lords staff pension scheme |
|
Helena Bayler |
275 |
– |
825 |
Design and amendment of specialist forms |
|
Information Accreditor |
2,125 |
13,770 |
24,735 |
Proportion of costs to provide the two Houses with assurance on the security of new IT systems |
|
JM HR Solutions Limited |
15,000 |
7,750 |
– |
Human resource review support |
|
Panache Consultancy Limited |
2,952 |
– |
– |
Review of staffing requirements for certain CRS outlets |
|
Sage Food Design and Development |
– |
10,761 |
8,269 |
CRS consultancy regarding food covering: menus, kitchen production, kitchen organisations and structure |
|
Stern Consultancy |
– |
3,468 |
– |
Income generation project support |
|
The Litmus Partnership Limited |
– |
7,982 |
18,400 |
CRS smarter procurement support and related services including supplier price challenge |
|
The Mystery Dining Company |
– |
555 |
395 |
Mystery shopping of catering venues |
|
Turpin Smale |
– |
4,400 |
– |
CRS outlet-specific consultancy to support the Change Programme |
|
University of Portsmouth Ltd |
4,157 |
– |
– |
Specialist support to develop a facility to search for records from the Parliament Archives online catalogue by place |
|
TOTAL |
68,775 |
90,720 |
125,074 |
N/A |
The House seeks only to engage external consultant support when it is more economical to engage specialist services on a fixed term basis than to embed capacity in-House, when specific external advice is beneficial, or when capacity issues necessitate it.
Most of the spending on consultancy in Catering and Retail Services has been to support an ambitious Change Programme which is seeking to deliver a step change in food quality and service by empowering individuals in order to provide better value for money to both the Member and the taxpayer. This investment should help the House reduce the cost of catering provision.
