Hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash in the Vale of Glamorgan has been used on external consultants.

Vale of Glamorgan Council has revealed it spent £378,000 on 47 external consultants over the past two financial years.

They were used by the council’s central education teams, social services, housing, planning, finance, IT and neighbourhood services such as highways, rubbish collection and public transport.

Council leader John Thomas said the council’s spend on external consultants – totalling £230,000 in 2017 to 2018 and £148,000 in 2018 to 2019 – was “good value for money”.

He told a full council meeting on May 1: “Consultants are expensive but they do fill gaps where this council has not got the man power to carry out the studies and the work necessary.

“Although it’s a lot of money in the scheme of things if we employed people to carry out all that work and they had been employed 365 days of the year it would cost us a lot more.”