IT has not been easy to find out how much taxpayers’ money was spent on bringing in external consultants to tell Darlington Borough Council how to dig itself out of a hole over its failing children’s services.

EXCLUSIVE: £66,000 of taxpayers' money spent on consultants after Darlington Borough Council children's services condemned

This was not a marginal case of a council falling slightly short in its provision of arguably the most important statutory service required of a local authority.

Ofsted inspectors ruled that Darlington’s children’s services were “inadequate” to the point at which children were being placed at risk. Sunderland’s children’s services were similarly condemned by Ofsted last year.

It could hardly have been more serious and yet it has taken two months for our question about the public cost to be answered under Freedom of Information legislation. We now know that £66,000 was spent on consultants brought in by the Department for Education (DfE) to tackle Darlington’s problems alone.

The DfE didn’t release that information readily. Indeed, it asked for more time to consider whether it was in the public interest for taxpayers to know how much of their money had been spent on addressing Darlington council’s failings. “Commercial interests” had to be taken into account.

It is our view that there should never have been any question about whether transparency on such an important issue was in the public interest. Of course it was.

And it is not just a matter of the cost to the public purse. The Ofsted condemnation and the fact that outside intervention was required begs very serious questions about the local authorities concerned: Was this a case of poor management by the councils? Was it a demonstration that austerity has gone so far that councils can no longer maintain basic services? Or was it a combination of both?

Whatever the answer, taxpayers have every right to know how their money is being spent.