I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 relating to the council’s expenditure on management consultancy services, including services provided by the "Big Four" firms: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and KPMG.
For the financial years 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25, please provide the following information:

1. Expenditure on the Big Four consultancies
a) Total amount spent with each of the following firms, broken down by financial year: PwC, EY, Deloitte, and KPMG.
b) The highest day rate paid to each of these firms in each financial year.
The Council are applying Section 21 exemption to this question. The information around consultancy services would be available on the 'Payments above £500' spend. https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/council-and-meetings/open-data-and-transparency/data-sets-and-open-data?field_media_asset_browser_target_id=101

2. Expenditure on other management consultants
a) Total amount spent on management consulting services excluding the Big Four, broken down by consultancy and financial year.
b) For each engagement, please include:
• The name of the consultancy firm
• The financial year of the expenditure
• A brief description of the project or services provided (e.g. project title or internal reference)
• The start and end dates of the engagement (or anticipated end date if ongoing)
• The procurement route used (e.g. open competition, framework agreement, direct award) and the name of the procurement framework, if applicable
The Council are applying Section 21 exemption to this question. The information around consultancy services would be available on the 'Payments above £500' spend. https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/council-and-meetings/open-data-and-transparency/data-sets-and-open-data?field_media_asset_browser_target_id=101

3. Additional Information (if available without exceeding cost limits) If it is possible within the cost limit:
a) Please state the number of individual consultants provided by each firm for each engagement.
b) Please indicate whether any deliverables were produced (e.g. reports, action plans) and whether these are publicly available.
c) Please confirm whether any of the consultancy work covered tasks that would normally be performed by in-house council staff or roles that were vacant at the time.
The Council are applying Section 12 in regards to question 3. Individuals are on the above link under 'Redacted Personal Details' so would be able to identify those from the corporations. We wouldn't hold information about how many consultants each firm used.

The time required to collect the requested information exceeds 18 hours. A rough estimation is that per each year requested, it would take approx. 28.25 hours to gather the information. There are 3 years requested, so our estimation to collect the total 3 years data is circa 85 hours. Collating the information would cover all 3 questions, so we would not be able to reduce the amount down, if we were just answering one question as the information would still need to be collated in the first place.