Reform-led council to bring in external consultants for efficiency review

The council has an annual spend of some £1.3bn and Cllr Harrison said he wanted a “deep dive” into how this was used. Leicestershire has some 6,00 staff and 1,000 contract staff, he said.

He told BBC Radio Leicester: “It will be from top to bottom, and bottom to top, of the whole business. Everything will be looked at."

Cllr Harrison said: “[The specialists] come from big companies. They know what they are doing. I'm looking for maximum efficiency that will have an effect on our budget."

He was though unable to say how much it would cost to employ the specialists because no contracts had been signed, but added: “Whatever they charge, it will be a hundred times to the benefit of the authority...

“It's going to be a once-in-a-generation sweep through and a look at how we are operating.

“We are demanding efficiencies because we have to do something dramatic.We have to get the budget balanced.”

Cllr Harrison said expected recommendations from the consultants within three to six months of their appointment.

In a separate statement setting out the medium term financial strategy at a council meeting, Cllr Harrison said: “We all know from our own experience that if you don’t deal with a problem, it gets worse. The same applies to managing a council’s finances. If your expenditure is higher than your income, then inflation and service demand will grow the problem until it becomes unmanageable.”

He said the previous Conservative administration had left behind “a £90 million black hole in the revenue budget [and] an £80 million funding shortfall in the capital programme”, together with a growing deficit on special needs education which already stood at £64m.

Cllr Harrison has proposed a 3% increase in council tax, below the 5% maximum set by the government, above which a referendum must be held on the increase.

Reform UK runs Leicestershire as a minority administration.

Mark Smulian