Kent County Council spent more than £4.5million on consultants in a year - the equivalent of more than £370,000 a month - we can reveal.

An analysis of invoices published by the county council each month shows £4,528,081 was attributed to consultants between January 2012 and December 2012.

The expenditure on contractors listed as consultants shows the overall bill last year was about £875,000 higher than in 2011.

The disclosure comes just weeks after County Hall signed off a budget that saw a package of savings totalling £95m and more job cuts.

According to our analysis, the biggest spender on consultants was the authority's business, strategy and support directorate, which accounted for £1.67m.

The council's education, learning and skills department accounted for £1.14m, while the third largest spender was the enterprise and environment directorate at £727,735.

We examined all the monthly invoices published by the county council over the 12-month period, adding up all those that were attributed to consultants.

While the use of external consultants is commonplace in local government, the cost to the taxpayer is not so well documented.

Our investigation has discovered the county council spent thousands of pounds on a string of management consultants specialising in executive coaching and training over the period.

Many are carrying out regular work for the authority, with invoices being submitted on a monthly basis.

Among them were Performance Coach Training, which was paid £65,853. It describes itself as "an international organisation providing cutting edge training in coaching skills, leadership development, team building and people performance all over the world."

Its website lists clients including furniture chain Ikea, Sky TV and the BBC.

A company called Unlimited Potential was paid nearly £18,000 over the year.

Its work for KCC, according to its website, involved "a number of soft skills and developmental workshops for all individuals with the authority including the emergency services".

It additionally provided the authority with "leadership for beginners and personal confidence workshops for individuals at all levels".

A consultancy called The Change Corporation, which was paid £15,550, says on its website: "We guarantee measurable results for your organisation delivered through changing culture and behaviour, increasing motivation, confidence and skills and developing world-class leaders."

Passe Partout, another executive coaching agency, received £13,600. The company website states: "Our strength and our passion is to uncover the psychological and cultural factors that drive performance and behaviour inside organisations. It really is our passion - we talk about this stuff over dinner!"

The county council said its use of outside training organisations was cost-effective and offered value for money.

Amanda Beer, the authority's director of human resources, said: "It is more cost effective to buy in external expertise for a few days at a time to deliver specialised training than to employ in-house trainers. Ensuring the cost effective commissioning and provision of training across the council and identifying opportunities for efficiencies through joint training with partner agencies is one of our key drivers."

She said the authority had taken steps to rely less on outside consultants and would be reviewing contracts when existing ones expired next year.

"We have also increased the use of e-learning and webinars to reduce the need to use external consultants and trainers in many areas of workforce development but recognise it will always be necessary to deliver some face to face training activity.

"As well as having to ensure the right level of continuous professional development for specialist staff, we also have a strong coaching culture in the authority and encourage professional management qualifications and learning."

All councils are now required to detail all expenditure over £500 on a monthly basis. The requirement to do so was part of the government's transparency reforms, aimed at introducing greater accountability into how taxpayers' money is spent.