The council is spending more than £200,000 a week on temporary staff, including one paid more than £3,000 for just four days work.

Analysis of Croydon Council’s accounts this financial year show between April and November the council paid £8,794,803.60 to provide for Resources and Customer Services to Comensura, a company specialising in providing short-term management staff.

Croydon Council announced at the start of 2011 310 jobs would have to be cut during 2011/12.

A further 149 positions are set to be cut in for the forth coming council budget, including 13 from Corporate Resources and Customer Services.

A spokesman for the council said: "Comensura is the council’s chosen agency for temporary staff filling short to medium term vacancies.

"We’ve been reducing the numbers of agency staff for the last couple of years as part of a planned process.

"Since 2009 the council has reduced the number of agency staff from 12.7 per cent to just 8.8 per cent of the total workforce.

"We have now set a target to get that figure down below 7.5 per cent. In the last year alone we have managed to reduce expenditure on agency workers by £5m."

Leaked documents also show Paul Davies, a level two procurement officer from Morgan Law, was paid more than £3,000 for four days work in September - the equivalent of £766 a day before tax.

This would amount to about £173,882 a year, more than David Cameron.

Finance reports show the council regularly paid Morgan Law around £3,192.25 a week, amounting to almost £80,000 between April and November.

A spokesman for the council defended the employment of Mr Davies.

He said: "Paul was with us on an initial six-month contract which eventually extended to just under two years.

"The Head of Procurement role within Croydon is a key role and is responsible for the oversight of the Council’s third party spend, which is over £340m.

"His appointment followed all of the regular protocols and his role was a very important one within the authority.

The extension of his contract was due largely to the difficulty in permanently appointing anyone with his level of expertise on the salary levels the council is able to offer."

He admitted the council spent about £40,000 more on Mr Davies that it would if employing a regular member of staff.

Cllr Tony Newman, leader of the opposition Labour party said: "Every council has to employ specialists at times, no-one would deny that, but the really crazy thing here is the council is bringing in people while also making huge cuts in staff.

"We have had two planning directors leave and the director of education, from the top down the place is in chaos."