A REVIEW into Southwest One, Somerset County Council's controversial partnership with computer giant IBM, has revealed the contract is way off course to deliver the £192 million in savings it originally promised.

Just £6 million has been saved to date and a further £60 million is in the pipeline.

But the county council said it was confident the contract would deliver more than £150 million in savings over the next seven years.

The review was commissioned by Conservative council leader Ken Maddock and despite being completed in June 2010, the details have only now been made public.

The review team was headed by Lydeard member Cllr John Wilkins and recommended the multi-million contract was renegotiated to deliver "efficiencies" - a process which has, apparently, now been "underway for several months".

The Southwest One contract was drawn up and signed by the then Liberal Democrat-ruled council in 2007.

Detractors accused ruling councillors of shrouding the deal in secrecy and at one stage the public sector union Unison joined forces with Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger to publicly question the deal.

While Mr Liddell-Grainger called for the Serious Fraud Squad to investigate, Unison revealed the county council had consistently refused Freedom of Information requests relating to the contract.

Under the deal, a raft of public services, including IT, finance, human resources and customer contact centres transferred from county council control to the private company.

Both Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Constabulary also signed over services to IBM.

The trio consistently claimed the partnership would lead to improved services and cost savings.

This week, almost two years after the review was first commissioned, county council leader Cllr Maddock said the report had provided detailed background information on the performance of the contract and its set-up.

He said the five-page report - some of which is now out of date - had been published on the council's website to enable taxpayers to act as "armchair auditors".

"I hope our residents will be able to use it to build on their own knowledge and understanding of this complex partnership and contract," Cllr Maddock said.

Although the report does not contain a detailed breakdown of the contract itself, it does give an overview of the pros and cons of the deal.

It also reveals the county council suffered "substantial but unqualified additional direct and indirect costs" when the partnership was first forged, largely because of "difficulties" in setting up financial processing systems.

But there had also been "notable achievements", not least in setting up a one-stop customer service centre.

Some savings targets had been met and costs had been kept down with the introduction of better spending controls.

However, others targets had been missed, weak management and training had led to confusion among staff and there were insufficient plans for the identification and delivery of the original saving projections.

A spokesman for the county council confirmed the contract was subject to an ongoing review and said the savings already identified were ahead of an eventual target of more than £150 million.

"The county council's area of the Southwest One contract – which also includes Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Police in partnership with IBM – is currently being renegotiated alongside all other major contracts, after Somerset County Council made savings amounting to £34m following central government cuts in its funding," the spokesman said.

IBM had been contractually bound to find gross savings of £192 million, but the procurement savings, in particular, had fallen short of projections.