CONSULTANTS will help continue the improvement seen in Powys County Council's services in recent months.

Funded by departments' own budgets, the consultants will be brought in to help maintain the upwards trend seen since an improvement and assurance board was set up in the wake of a critical Care Inspectorate Wales report into the council's children's services department in 2018.

Later this autumn, the Welsh Government will wind up the improvement board after seeing an uptick in performance, and five internal boards run by the council itself will replace it.

After questions from Liberal Democrat councillor and former Brecon and Radnorshire MP Roger Williams, council leader Cllr Rosemarie Harris confirmed that there will be outside support for departments as they continue the improvement.

Cllr Harris, who heads the Independent/Conservative administration, said: “The boards will be supported within existing resources which will predominantly be staff time.

“The funding of the external experts will be through service budgets with the exception of the support to education which will continue to be funded by Welsh Government for now.”

Cllr Harris says that these changes will “formalise existing arrangements” and financial or staffing pressures should not be a problem.

Cllr Harris added that there would be no extra work for scrutiny committees as they will be looking at information that is “already available”.

“Scrutiny will be able to provide value adding feedback to the Cabinet/EMT (Executive Management Team) to ensure the organisation continually improves,” she said.

The boards will be overseen by a central "corporate assurance board" which meets monthly, and is expected to be chaired by Cllr Harris to look at overall improvement.

Four other improvement boards will be set up at service level, for education, social services, housing and highways, transport and regeneration.

These boards will be chaired by the respective portfolio holders.

The Education Service was added to the improvement board’s remit in 2019 after a critical Estyn report.

The board is chaired independently by the former chief executive of Swansea Council, Jack Straw.

He is expected to give a final report this autumn as part of the handing over process.