Concerns over ‘wasted’ money on admin and consultants for West Midlands projects

Members of the West Midlands Combined Authority’s (WMCA) Overview & Scrutiny Committee were told hundreds of thousands of pounds were not being effectively used due to constraints placed on grants received.

Ed Cox, deputy chief executive, said that since 2016 the authority has been funded by different Government departments giving around 90 grants for specific purposes.

But he said, for some projects, the funding awarded would have to be spent within short timescales, resulting in the need to outsource the work as they wouldn’t be able to appoint staff within the period.

In April this year, WMCA was one of just two English regions to receive an Integrated Settlement of £389 million as well as transport funding of £211 million.

From 2026/27 it will become a multi-year settlement which bosses say will bring in even more control and flexibility over how funding is spent.

At the meeting, members heard how ‘government administration costs’ saw £700,000 extracted from the £70 million Commonwealth Games Legacy Enhancement Fund.

They also heard how £127,400 was spent on consultants to carry out an evaluation of the WMCA Job Rotation Pilot in Coventry.

Mr Cox said: “We have had to receive each individual grant with these terms and conditions and then try to spend it according to a timeline the Government department has dictated to us.

“Because of a limited timeframe, we couldn’t start appointing staff to do that properly or building our own capacity to do it.

“So the way you’ve got to do it is get consultants in to do it and we end up with these projects.

“We have consistently said to government this is no way to treat a serious regional body led by democratic authorities and led by the mayor.

“We need a better way in which to fund mayoral combined authorities so they have started to make that transition with the Integrated Settlement.

“We’re in the first year of that and they’ve done that for around 20 different grants out of the 90 and now coming together in this year and we’re able to be a bit more strategic in the way we fund things.”

He added: “We’ve had three items on the (meeting) agenda, all of which have been about relatively small amounts of money from relatively short term periods that are given by Government with particular strings attached.

“The way in which they are given to us means we have to spend a disproportionate amount, on other forms of consultancy, simply because there are no other ways to deliver them in that timeframe.

“It’s a waste of public money, to be frank about it, because we could be building up the capacity of our local authorities or ourselves to do this.”