By Cllr Bill Revans, leader of Somerset Council
Somerset became a Unitary Authority on 1st April 2023, advocated by the Conservative County Council from 2018 and imposed by the Conservative Government in 2021.
Lib Dems controlled three of the four Districts and we campaigned for an East-West split. Polls showed 65% supporting our proposals and our literature made it clear that we opposed the decision.
Accepting that Unitary was now coming, we were adamant that it would not be a Tory led hostile take-over, but a merger of five councils. And to do that that, we had to lead it. In the May 2022 elections we secured an historic win with 61 Lib Dems out of 110 councillors.
Our first year was dominated by bringing the five councils together. I was a former opposition leader on Sedgemoor DC as well as leader of the County Council Lib Dem group. I invited the leaders of the other three districts to sit on the Executive, ensuring all former councils were included.
Moving to a Unitary Council is a complex process. It is not an event. The approach needs openness, a willingness to listen and to compromise.
We recognised that staff and member loyalty to previous councils was high and to bring in as much that was positive from the former councils as possible. However, we needed fresh staff leadership so recruited our Chief Executive externally.
Merging five councils is complicated. Each council had a different culture. They also have various IT systems; policies; fees and charges; assets systems; planning governance; staff terms and conditions and so much more. Aligning services from four different district councils was especially tricky and time consuming. And then a wholesale restructure of five different staff structures into one – a piece of work still on-going.
We have worked closely with our City, Town and Parish councils to protect services and assets. As Lib Dems we want to see services run at the most appropriate local level. It was critical that the unparished area of Taunton got its town council back.
Local Government Reorganisation is not a solution to the broken model of local government finance. Social care would have driven Somerset County Council to a section 114 notice last year. After a 40% cut in central government funding, we now finance social care mainly out of council tax, a regressive tax on 1991 property values. A six-year freeze of council tax by the County Council Conservatives and a low council tax base has left Somerset Council massively under-funded.
While there are savings to be had from Local Government Reorganisation through economies of scale and back office efficiency – but these are dwarfed by the rising costs and demand of our Adult’s and Children’s services which now represent 66% of our spending and growing.