The cost of a panel providing a council with external expertise and challenge has been value for money, the authority’s leader has said.

The improvement board helping to address Southampton City Council’s governance and financial challenges has been in place since October 2023.

Councillors were told the council had paid just shy of £100,000 for the board team to date.

A governance committee meeting on Monday, January 13, heard civic bosses had yet to determine when the external support would no longer be needed.

When quizzed on if the board was a worthwhile expenditure, Labour council leader Cllr Lorna Fielker said: “It absolutely has been value for money for us as evidenced by the in-year savings, by the fact that we are not just able to set that balanced budget but the savings we expect to achieve over the coming years.

“Without the improvement board we would not have got the right transformation partner. It has absolutely been a good expenditure for the council.”

Improvement board chair Theresa Grant said the prospect the council faced 15 months ago of government-appointed commissioners would have brought a larger cost burden.

Cllr Fielker said the recruitment process for a new chief executive was progressing.

Councillors were told interviews with a three-person shortlist are set to take place on Monday, January 20.

Current interim chief executive Andrew Travers’s fixed-term contract until April.

Committee member Steve Leggett raised concerns about the range of “temporary” appointments and resources currently at the council’s disposal.

This included the interim chief executive, the improvement board, transformation implementation partner Newton Europe and the post of transformation director James Wills-Fleming.

Cllr Leggett said he was worried about the council’s “resilience” once these “safety nets” had been removed.

Cllr Fielker said Newton Europe’s team were brought in to provide skills transfer and when the transformation director’s time with the authority ends, the council will be at the point that it can deal with the work itself without the additional support.

She added: “What we will probably do is work with the (improvement) board to agree the outcomes, so what is it that we need to achieve as an organisation in order to say that piece of work has come to an end and we will move on without them.

“That is a bit of work we will doing on over the next couple of meetings.”