LEADING councillors have defended the pace at which consultants have been working on beleaguered Somerset Council’s transformation programme as ‘realistic and achievable’.

The council has been changing the way it runs local services in a bid to cut costs, curb rising demand, and close a projected £73 million budget gap.

It agreed last September to a £20 million contract with Newton Consulting to oversee the next phase of its transformation programme to deliver significant savings over the next three to four years.

But, it has been criticised by local resident Chris Mann, who echoed an auditor’s warning that the council was moving too slowly and may have already lost too many of its best managers.

Mr Mann told councillors: “Initiating your redundancy programme before completing a transformation plan was surely a bad choice, because you may have lost good managers needed to run wider departments.

“We do not know why the council did not plan what is really the perfectly normal business merger achieved by Wiltshire Council 15 years ago.

“Was it because the Liberal Democrat leadership are still ideologically opposed to one unitary council?

“Or, perhaps, this was the way the new highly-paid chief executive proposed, and the leadership were not prepared to reject this.

“You are paying Newton Consulting up to £20 million for advice to ‘improve services, enhance workforce experience, and achieve long-term financial sustainability’.

“Two months before a detailed savings plan is needed, all they have come up with is ‘a whole council diagnostic’ to ‘set up a programme for success’.

“This seems the complete opposite of ‘at pace’.

“The programme requires a savings to investment ratio of three to one to be successful, meaning £135 million in savings for the £45 million ultimately spent.”

Mr Mann queried if the council had a ‘plan B’ should the target not be met.

Now, council deputy leader Cllr Liz Leyshon has hit back and assured Mr Mann the authority had ‘the right approach’.

Cllr Leyshon said the transformation programme was ‘realistic and achievable’, and the rate of return of investment would vary from one business case to another.

She said ‘detailed plans with milestones’ would be put to councillors ‘in due course’.

Cllr Leyshon said: “Taken as a whole, we will be seeking over a period of three to four years a return of three pounds saved for every one pound invested.

“The ambition is realistic and achievable, based on the experience of many local authorities up and down the land.

“I have found it personally instructive to hear former leaders of other councils refer to a period of eight years as necessary to create a stable, sustainable council.

“That was before the increase in demand for, and cost of, adult placements, children’s services, and homelessness, and before the impact of austerity, before the global pandemic, before Brexit, before increases in interest rates and before inflation.”

Council leader Bill Revans said: “I do have confidence this process is producing a timely, at-pace solution to our issues.”