THE former West Somerset Council headquarters building in Williton may be sold to help fill a budget black hole for the county’s new unitary authority.

Somerset Council is battling a £42 million-and-rising funding gap just months after it was created and wants to avoid becoming the next authority to go bankrupt after Birmingham City Council.

It has ordered a review of all property assets to decide what it can sell and how quickly in order to raise cash.

West Somerset House, in Killick Way, Williton, was the main office of the former district council until it merged with Taunton Deane Borough Council (TDBC) in 2019, to create Somerset West and Taunton Council (SWT) which the unitary replaced in April of this year.

The building is currently shared by the county authority with Avon and Somerset Police, which moved from its station in Priest Street two years ago.

Now, the unitary council has said it could be sold in a rationalisation of its property portfolio.

Property rationalisation programme manager Sara Kelly said there were four council properties in Williton, three of them in Killick Way – the former headquarters, the public library, and a children’s centre.

She said: “Their front doors literally look at one another.

“We have undertaken a lot of data gathering for each of these four properties, and we think we are at the point where we have two options that we are currently considering.”

Option one would see the council sell the children’s centre, the library, and nearby Beckett House, in Bridge Street, which is home to a skills and enterprise centre, and relocate their services to West Somerset House.

Ms Kelly said: “West Somerset House is significantly under-utilised, and we are confident that it is large enough to fit all the other services into that building.

“We are undergoing feasibility studies to see whether we could adequately provide soundproofing, because there would be a range of services and it is currently a very open plan building.”

The second option was to keep the children’s centre, library, and Beckett House, and sell West Somerset House and find alternative premises for its staff and services.

Since the formation of SWT most council meetings were moved to TDBC’s Deane House, in Taunton, which continues to be used for the district planning committee.