Cash-strapped Powys council spent nearly £1m in a year for experts to tell it how to save money.
The council must slash spending by £83.2m by 2020 and says it paid out £950,000 in fees to consultants during the 2015/16 financial year to ensure it meets its savings targets.
But opposition groups on the independent-controlled council have criticised the spending and the authority’s approach to making the cuts which have included handing leisure centres to a private operator and reorganising care services.
Deputy council leader Wynne Jones, who is the cabinet member for finance, said the consultants had saved the council hundreds of thousands of pounds across various spending areas.
He said: "Change of the scale demanded needs specialist support, expertise that the council does not have on a daily basis. We have invested in external consultants to make sure we had specialist knowledge available to guide us through the process, to go it alone without adequate support would be a recipe for disaster."
But Conservative councillor Gary Price said the cabinet is failing to take responsibility for the cuts and Labour’s Matthew Dorrance accused the independent councillors of being "unaccountable".
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