Case for creating Somerset Council marked by "poor decision-making" according to new report
The combined unitary authority officially came into being in 2023
The case for creating Somerset Council was “weak” and marked by “poor decision-making” before its inception, an independent report has concluded.
Somerset Council officially came into being on April 1, 2023, replacing Somerset County Council and the four district councils of Mendip, Sedgemoor, Somerset West & Taunton and South Somerset.
The reorganisation was based around the One Somerset business case, put forward by Conservative county council leader David Fothergill and approved by Boris Johnson’s government in July 2021.
A new report by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) has found significant weaknesses in the business case and a string of bad decisions in the run-up to ‘vesting day’, leaving the new council on a perilous financial footing.
This report comes less than a fortnight after the council (now run by the Liberal Democrats) only approved its annual budget thanks to ‘exceptional financial support’ from central government, including a higher-than-normal increase in council tax bills.
The report said the delivery of the new council had required “very significant effort” and the One Somerset case “may have under-estimated” how long it would take for the promised financial savings to materialise.
Of the originally promised savings of £18.5m within the business case, £8.8m has been achieved to date, with the remainder on track to be achieved by the end by April 2026 as part of the council’s transformation programme.
While this transformation programme is “well-conceived, well-led and deserves to succeed”, the report concludes that it has also led to “poor morale” within the council’s workforce and warns that “further steps” will need to be taken to ensure the remaining staff are properly supported.
Most damningly for the Conservatives (which controlled the county council between 2009 and 2022), the report concludes that “a significant proportion” of the current council’s budgetary woes has been caused by the Tories’ decision to freeze council tax for six consecutive years from 2010.
This decision – which deprived Somerset’s public services of hundreds of millions of pounds – has “led to funding shortfalls in each future year in perpetuity”.
CIPFA has concluded that further ‘exceptional financial support’ may be needed to balance the budget from early-2026 if the council proves “unable to deliver its financial goals” and deliver savings through transformation and devolution down to town and parish councils.
The council failed to deliver up to £10m of promised savings against its target for 2023/24, and this remains undelivered within the 2024/25 financial year.
The report also warns against plans to reduce the role of the council’s chief financial officer and monitoring officer within its leadership team – with both figures playing key roles in ensuring the council is on top of its day-to-day spending and long-term debt.
A spokesman said: “The management of debt generally, which is highly distributed across the council, needs a more coordinated approach and
should be more closely monitored
“Governance in the council generally is satisfactory but capable of improvement in some areas.
“The adult social care service is being led and managed insightfully, has received significant additional resources, and confronts national rather than local challenges, which are being approached with pragmatic good sense.
“Children’s services remains on its improvement journey and while overspends remain, these have been mitigated in the current year with the re-basing of the budget for 2024/25.”
Councillor Bill Revans has been the leader of Somerset Council since its inception, having led the Lib Dems to triumph in the local elections in May 2022 and thereby run the county council for the last 11 months of its existence.
He said: “We welcome this independent report that confirms the council is responding well to the financial emergency through delivering savings, and which recognises the work of the new leadership of the council.
“It is explicit that we have inherited a Conservative business case for unitary that had weaknesses and that the Tories’ council tax freeze was a mistake, leaving the council underfunded in perpetuity.
“There are a number of recommendations, some of which we have already
implemented, that we value and we will study the report carefully to identify lessons that we can learn.”