REDUNDANCY payments, which were almost double the original estimate and led to a mass exodus of key staff, seriously undermined the merger of West Somerset and Taunton Deane councils, it was claimed this week.

In a scathing report on the run-up to forming the new Somerset West and Taunton Deane authority (SWAT), the independent South West Audit Partnership (SWAP) said the previous councils had “lost control” of redundancies.

The decision to allow all staff to take voluntary redundancy had led to a “knowledge drain” which ultimately damaged the transformation programme.

Costs had seriously overshot, and predicted savings had not been met.

In a furious reaction to the report, local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said: “The auditors have dug up a scandal. The promised savings were inventions.

“It was a disgraceful scheme which cost taxpayers a fortune and has left the new council with a system which still doesn’t work.”

This week, SWAT leader Cllr Federica Smith-Roberts, who commissioned the report shortly after she took office in May 2019, said it “paints a very stark picture of the unreasonably ambitious and intrinsically-risky programme the former councils embarked upon”.

She added: “It has been important for us to understand how this process was implemented and why it went wrong so that we can focus our efforts as a new council to deliver the services residents need.

“We need to draw a clear line between what happened at TDBC and WSC and what is happening now. It’s not about the past. It’s about learning lessons and looking forward.”

For the full story on the SWAP report, buy today’s Free Press.