In your side swipe at the so-called 'drama lessons' being provided for county councillors (Oxford Mail, September 23), you again bring up the hoary old chestnut of consultants' fees topping £12m.
Nowhere do you seek to set this in any sort of context. Neither is there even a pretence at trying to ascertain the extent to which this provides value for money.
Instead, all we get is raw, anti-consultant prejudice.
In addition you are woefully inaccurate in your description of our financial reporting system, SAP.
The bulk of what you chose to describe as consultants' fees is, in fact, made up of the costs of outsourcing work on our property holdings and highways.
This saves the council money and introduces a level of commercial flexibility into our operations which is undoubtedly in the best interests of Oxfordshire residents.
Your description of our SAP computer system is one which I do not recognise, perhaps because it is recycled old news from 2004 and earlier. It is not an ailing system.
It is highly focused on delivering sound computer-based financial reporting and it is being rolled out successfully around the council in a systematic and consistent way in a manner that is sufficiently robust to support future reorganisation, to enable effective management decisions to be taken and to show us where we can lower operating costs.
JOHN HOWELL (Councillor)
Cabinet Member for
Change Management
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