Nottingham City Council has spent over £3m in 7 years on private sector companies in an attempt to make its housing benefits service work properly.

Over £900k was paid to consultants Kendric Ash to restructure it out of the abysmally chaotic mess it was in in the early noughties.

However, they can't have done a very good job because since they started NCC has handed over £2m to private companies to process housing benefit claims for them. They even used Crapita at one point which you only do if you're stupid and desperate. Last year they paid £266k to a company called Mouchel.

And with all this money going to big business they still had the worst processing accuracy record in the East Midlands.

More here

 http://ncclols.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-much.html