AYRSHIRE College have spent almost £170,000 on consultants in the last three years.

New figures show that between August 2013 and March this year, the college forked out £168,736.01 in consultancy fees - almost £7,000 of which went to hiring a firm to provide basketball coaching.

Freedom of Information request figures show that for the year 2013/14, consultants and were paid £40,790.82 with the bulk of that (£15,770.52) going towards staff development.

That figure rose significantly to £79,512.57 in 2014/15 and the £48,432.71 total from August 2015 to March has already exceeded the 2013/14 spending.

The majority of the expenditure in the three years went towards human resources/staff development with £98,180.07 being spent.

Octo Minerva Consultancy Ltd received the most money for college staff training with £53,955.06 while Broadberry Consultancy Limited and Elite Training & Consultancy were paid £31,180.47 and £13,044 respectively in those three years.

Chem Tech Consultancy Ltd were paid £40,683.39 for advice on controlling legionnaire’s disease at the Ayrshire College campuses while SEE Consultants Ltd raked in £6,930 for basketball coaching courses between 2013 and 2015.

The use of consultants within other public bodies has proven controversial in the past.

Back in April, the Herald revealed how North Ayrshire Council spent almost £3million paying consultants and agency staff off the books in a similar time period.

An Ayrshire College spokesperson said: “We are committed to investment in staff development. With over 800 staff, they are our most important resource and we want to recruit and retain our staff so that we can provide a high quality learning and teaching experience to our students.

“We want to be the employer of choice and therefore we invest in staff so that they can be the best in the sector.

“Following our merger in 2013 we supported 100 managers with leadership and management development training.

“SEE Basketball Consultants on behalf of Basketball Scotland, the National Governing Body for Scotland, delivered a Basketball Scotland Coaching qualification enabling all our NC students to work in the community to coach basketball to children.

“Our sports students were able to deliver six weeks of training to pupils in East Ayrshire culminating in a Basketball Festival. To work in the sports industry our students need to have professional qualifications and this is an example.”