Somerset this week: 11 April 2025

We investigate a £46m hole (really), ask where are the £10m of savings Somerset Council claim they have made, look at adult social care across Somerset and why are the Police excited?

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Spot the savings

Somerset Council appointed consultants Newton in 2023 to help them restructure the way Adult Social Care provision in the county works. It has, we have been told, been a rip-roaring success. Newton were paid £7m for their work.

In return, Somerset Council claim they have delivered £10m of savings and these are going to recur each year. Further savings of more than £3m are anticipated (and included in the 2025/26 budget figures) in the current financial year.

In a press release in March we were told: “Due to its success in Somerset, ‘My Life, My Future’ has been shortlisted for the prestigious Local Government Chronicle (LGC) award for ‘Health and Care’ for its achievements, with the award ceremony set to take place in June of this year.”

This is obviously fantastic news and the more so given Somerset Council’s desperate financial situation (there’s a funding gap of over £100m to fill for 2026/27).

We have no reason to doubt the success of the project. However, we have now asked a series of specific questions about where the savings have been made and no-one can give us a precise answer.

You’ll not be surprised to learn that this has only enhanced our curiosity. The more we asked for extra information about the specific savings that had been made, the more vague and generalised the answers became.

First we were pointed to two budget lines. One for 2023/24 and one for 2024/25. Each had a nice round sum for exactly £5m described as “estimated savings”.

So we asked to see the exact budget figures for 2024/25 in the hope of spotting the areas where savings were actually being made. We were referred to a report titled My Life My Future. It too mentioned the £10m round sum of savings expected. But there was a complete absence of £ note figures for line by line actual savings.

It too mentioned the £10m round sum of savings

There were however lots of words saying how savings would be made by the different initiatives. But no real, actual figures for costs or savings.

We asked again. This time we got more words and a statement: “Despite these monumental challenges, improvements from the ‘My Life, My Future’ transformation programme has and continues to lessen the pressure on our services because people are being supported to remain independent in their own homes and in the way they want. This has inevitably delivered financial savings.”

When it came to answering our question about specific £ note savings we were referred to two more reports. The first was presented to Adults and Health Scrutiny in October 2024.

This contained lots more words and claims about savings being made. It showed a projected cash profile into the future. But of actual spend figures and evidence of detailed savings in £ notes against individual budget lines there was not a sign.

A second report was proffered, one that had been given to the Executive of the Council in February 2025. Once again we are told that “program results have been strong” and that savings of (have a guess??) £10m are being made.

There were lots of claims for efficiencies and improvements but searching for detailed accounts of actual £ notes being saved, once again we drew a blank.

Which inevitably left us wondering if these savings are real? Why the Executive of the Council have not asked to see some evidence of specific savings beyond the round sum of £10m that keeps being trotted out, we can only guess.

What we do know is that the outcome for Adult Social Care in 2023/24 was an overspend against budget of £17.5m. The last budget figures (at the end of December 2024) for 2024/25 suggested an expected underspend against budget of £4.25m.

As the year end has only just closed we won’t see the final figures for some time yet.

No doubt, Adult Social Care would say that whilst the savings were made of £10m they were more than compensated for by extra volumes of work and extra requirements of the service. But we are asked to accept this in the absence of any hard figures.

What we can say is there is no evidence of savings of £10m being made. No precise figure for savings made has ever been given – to us or, as far as we can tell, to the Executive. Instead the nice round £10m is trotted out each time. And it would be truly extraordinary if the actual hard number for savings when taken line by line across each cost centre in the accounts, came out at £10,000,000.00.

In the face of an absolute refusal to provide hard numbers, actual spend versus budget, actual savings by budget line or even the number of clients being handled by Adult Social Care we have a duty to remain sceptical.

In desperation we asked for the number of clients having not a shred of evidence to support the £10m savings claim. We thought at least we may be able to determine if the department was really doing more than in previous years.

This time we did not even get a direct answer, however vague. We were told our question was being referred to the Freedom of Information (FoI) team. This is useful, as it gives Somerset Council another 20 days in which to continue to avoid the question. We’ve already had an apology from the FoI team for the delay in acknowledging our request (the one we didn’t make!) which does not bode well. But, as of today (11 April 2025), there’s no sign of the information.

It is almost as if Newton told them there were £10m of savings and they didn’t check but told everyone else. OK so perhaps not, but again there is an unwillingness to provide evidence to the contrary.

In conclusion, it is perfectly possible that Adult Social Care services are indeed saving £10m of costs each year as a result of the work that Somerset Council paid Newton £7m to carry out. All we can say is that, despite having asked repeatedly, we have received no evidence to support the claim.

Adult Social Care around the region

The big area that has hurt local government finances in recent years is the growth of the cost of providing Adult Social Care services. Much of this cost is a result of an ageing population and the increasing prevalence of disabling diseases such as Alzheimer’s in that population.

Somerset Council does not have to treat Dementia and Alzheimer’s but it does have to fund care home places for sufferers as well as those who are no longer able to care for themselves at home.

Central Government has recognised this is a growing problem and allowed councils to increase their council tax by 2% just to cover increasing costs in Adult Social Care.

It is a problem that continues to grow. According to Somerset Council, in 2021, 24.9% of Somerset’s population was aged over 65 years, up from 21.2% in 2011.

But Somerset Council is not unique. All councils in the West Country have a similar problem. It is a place that older people come for their retirement. It is, bluntly, a nice place to live.

It is a place that older people come for their retirement

As Somerset Council refuse to divulge any details of how they have saved money on Adult Social Care (see article above), we thought it would be interesting to look at how much the council is spending on the over-65 population and compare that with other councils. Does it look like a council that is saving money and being more efficient?

We used Government data for Adult Social Care spend in the year 2024/25. We compared that with House of Commons Library figures for the population aged over 65 in each council area. We then looked at the average spend per person over the age of 65. This is how it looks within the county of Somerset:

It is interesting if not surprising to see that Somerset Council has a significantly higher percentage of older people than its immediate neighbours. But because we are looking at spend per head of the over 65 population, that difference is accounted for in our figures.

In conclusion, Somerset Council is spending less per head of population aged over 65 than North Somerset on Adult Social Care but quite a lot more than Bath & NE Somerset.

However, if we broaden that out a bit and look at the rest of the West Country we see a very different picture.

Again it is interesting to see that in the context of the West Country as a whole, Somerset’s population over 65 is not exceptional. But, what is especially interesting is that the spend per resident over 65 is significantly higher than all of the other counties in the West Country.

Now this is not an exact science. It may be that the population of the Somerset Council area is on the whole frailer and iller than other counties around us. Hence, the spend has to be higher.

It may also be the case that Somerset was so hopelessly inefficient with Adult Social Care, that even after saving £10m a year, it is still spending more per head than any other local authority in the West Country (bar North Somerset).

But on an “other things equal basis”, you would have to say it appears interesting that, despite claims to have saved £10m a year on adult social care, it is still spending more per resident over the age of 65 than any other council in the area.

Multi Million Pound hole

For once when we are talking about a large and expensive hole, we are not talking about one in a local council’s finances.

The hole in question came from a quick look through the plans the Environment Agency (EA) have for spending your money in Somerset over the next year.

West Moor, the reservoir fills up on either side of the River Isle

You would imagine you would have heard of many of the projects in the pipeline.

Most Somerset residents will know about the Bridgwater Barrier, for instance. Rather like the Thames Barrier only on the Rover Parrett between Bridgwater and the sea, it aims to do much the same thing as the Thames Barrier does for London. That is now well and truly under way with £47m allocated to the build this year.

If you live in the Bath area you may know that some £3.5m is to be spent on replacing the Twerton Gates. These gates span the width of the Avon impounding a constant water level under low flow conditions but raising during floods. However, they are at least 40 years old and now need replacing.

If you live in North Somerset you may be either relieved or disappointed (depending on how you look at it!) to learn that the EA have no plans to do any further works on flood prevention in your patch aside from £10,000 to spend on the Blind Yeo and £469,000 at Pill Pile on the southern bank of the River Avon.

What we suspect most Somerset residents will not know is that there’s another project the EA have been quietly working away on. It has £9.6m of funding allocated this year but that’s out of a total project cost of £46m. You didn’t know?

£9.6m of funding allocated this year but that’s out of a total project cost of £46m

Well if you live in Drayton or Muchelney you may have heard of it, you may even have seen the parade of earth-moving equipment going to and from the site, but otherwise it has not been exactly publicised.

The current budget is to rebuild a “reservoir” at West Moor. In case you live in the area and have definitely not noticed a reservoir in your neighbourhood, this is because it is not a reservoir in the normal meaning of the word. It is essentially a low lying area of fields. The West Moor flood storage reservoir is formed of two areas, West Moor and South Moor, which are connected via siphon that runs beneath the River Isle.

The EA explain it thus: “At times of high levels, water from the River Isle and direct catchment flows into West Moor reservoir until such time it can be pumped back into the river by Midelney pumping station. The large size of this holding area qualifies it as a reservoir under legislation, making it subject to a strict inspection regime.”

That means spending money periodically on refurnishing it and ensuring it is in robust enough condition to do the work it was built to do. The EA again: “This maintenance work is required as part of a statutory inspection and can only be carried out during dry weather and takes place over a period of years. Unfortunately, record levels of rain and challenging conditions last year has influenced the timing and costs of this maintenance work. The work is expected to complete in autumn next year (2026).”

This is reference to the fact that the original budget was £32m and was expected to see the work finished by September 2025.

Companies House takes action!

During our time at the ‘coal face’ Somerset Confidential® has had occasion (more than once) to lament the total ineffectiveness of Companies House. Well that is all about to change as a new piece of legislation kicks in that will affect every director of a UK company, and that is millions of people.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Readers may recall the fiasco of former Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh filing accounts that were wrong, a lot wrong, had bits missing and needed correcting more than once.

Yet Companies House didn’t spot any of the errors and insisted that in any case it is not their job, they simply act as a filing service. So, in theory, a company can file any old rubbish and that’s OK…

This may not have irked the public at large as much as it did journalists and others who like to know these things. But when some dodgy directors started registering multiple companies at other (unsuspecting) people’s private homes, that did start to upset the public at large. And with that came a demand for change.

The fact that Companies House would file simply anything that was put in front of them without checking was no longer good enough. The upshot of all this is some new legislation: the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. This gave Companies House new and enhanced powers to help disrupt economic crime and support economic growth.

One of the provisions of which will require all company directors to identify themselves and prove they are who they say they are.

You may be surprised to learn that up until now this was yet another thing that Companies House did not require. You could pretty much file a company with a director called say: Mouse, Mr Michael, and the system would simply let it through.

However good the new intention may be, the logistics will be mind-blowing. There may be only a few thousand publicly quoted companies in the UK, but there are millions of private companies with approximately 7.8 million directorships. There are believed to be over six million individual directors (as some directors will have more than one directorship).

Just looking at the county of Somerset, in just one year (2023, the latest figures we have) 6,531 new companies were set up:

• 1,414 were in Bath & NE Somerset

• 1,655 in North Somerset and

• 3,462 in the Somerset Council area

Today there are 60,186 registered companies in Somerset (again as at the end of 2023), many of them small ‘husband and wife’ companies with just two directors.

there are 60,186 registered companies in Somerset

The new legislation will require every one of those directors to identify themselves. In the words of Companies House: “Identity verification will provide more assurance about who is setting up, running, owning and controlling companies in the UK.” The idea is simple – you simply verify personal details against a document such as a passport or driving licence.

Needless to say in practice it is unnecessarily complicated. To do that you need a GOV.UK One Login. You can start the process here. Don’t be put off by the fact you don’t have an account yet, you need to click on “sign in” just to get to the page where you create an account! It is not as straightforward as it could be (two separate pin numbers were required) just to move onto the next screen but it is worth taking a look.

For now the system is voluntary, but it will become compulsory in the autumn.

You can probably guess what will happen to the system when six million individuals try to set themselves up at the same time.

So our advice is that it might be a good idea to get in early before the rush and the inevitable system crashes that will follow.

Reporting rural crime

Avon & Somerset Police tell us they are very excited.

The cause of their excitement is the launch of a new form. Well, it takes all sorts and (with apologies to W.S. Gilbert) if a policeman’s lot is not a happy one, we should not begrudge them a little excitement.

The new form is specifically for incidents involving agricultural crime, such as theft of equipment, machinery, livestock or property, as well as criminal damage to agriculture land.

And being a large rural county where agricultural crime is prevalent, hard to detect and can create a feeling of insecurity in the local community when it happens, this is not a trivial matter.

Our first question was, perhaps inevitably, if a new form is being launched, what was wrong with the old one? Nothing apparently. A Police spokesperson told us: “The ‘old’ form is our standard online crime reporting form. This is still a form used however, the new form is specifically for rural and wildlife crime with specific niche questions.”

So hopefully by identifying rural crime and sending it to the right team, it will be dealt with more speedily? Perhaps. The Police told us that: “These forms will go through our Enquiry Office (as with all online reporting) and out-of-hours our Contact Centre and then can be allocated to an appropriate department / officer.”

All forms will be evaluated on a threat, harm, risk scale

The obvious question that begs is what response time do you expect in terms of receiving a form and reading it? Perhaps the question was too general. All the Police would say is: “All forms will be evaluated on a threat, harm, risk scale as per force policy and will be carefully considered for viable lines of enquiry.”

So we tried a different tack and asked how many officers and PCSOs does Avon and Somerset currently have devoted to rural crime. And how many are devoted to wildlife crime? “We have a Rural Crime Team who, at full strength, is made up of an Inspector, a Sergeant, and three PCs. However, rural crime is also the responsibility of all of our Neighbourhood Policing Teams and Response teams. The Rural Crime Team investigate and manage all wildlife crime as well as advise and train officers across the constabulary.”

That doesn’t sound like a huge resource for what is a significant rural area. So we wondered how extensive rural crime is? The Police told us they could not answer that easily and it would require a Freedom of Information request. Instead they suggested: “Rural crime is made up of a range of crime types that affect the rural community, particularly farmers. On speaking with communities and partner leads within this area it is clear that victims found it difficult to use the original online form. Therefore the new and improved form based on feedback from members of the community should help those victims navigate the reporting system.”

We took a look at the new form (you can find it here https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/report/rural-wildlife-crime/). It is relatively straightforward (in contrast to the new Companies House identification system).

The first question it asks is “are you in immediate danger?” If you click “Yes” it takes you to a new page with the advice: “If you or someone else is in immediate danger or have been injured, do not fill in this form, call 999 now.” Good advice and hopefully obvious but why isn’t it on the first page instead of two clicks away?

The rest of the process is straightforward though why the Police need to know your “gender identity”, “age” and “ethnic group” to report a crime is beyond us. Yes of course a name and address to ensure someone is who they say they are, but you have to fill in four pages of (mostly unnecessary) information just to get to the place where you report the crime.

The actual details required about the crime are relatively easy to use and should encourage users (at least those who are willing to work their way through the first four pages) to report crimes.

Of course if you are not excited by the new form, or you find it difficult to use or too intrusive, you can still report crimes at a Police Station with a public desk. There are still 16 left in the county of Somerset. However, not all of them are open all the time (for instance Wellington is only open on Friday between 10am and 2pm). They are as follows:

• Bath Police Station: 3-4 Manvers Street, Bath, BA1 1JQ

• Bridgwater Police Centre: Express Park, Bristol Road, Bridgwater, TA6 4RR

• Burnham on Sea: Burnham Road, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, TA8 1LS

• Chard: 2 Millfield, Chard, TA20 2DA

• Minehead Police Station: Townsend Road, Minehead, Somerset, TA24 5RJ

• Shepton Mallet Police Station: Haskins Retail Park, Shepton Mallet, BA4 5SB

• Taunton Police Station: The Deane House, Belvedere Road, Taunton, TA1 1HE

• Radstock Police Station: Wells Road, Radstock, Bath, BA3 3SG

• Keynsham: Ashmead Road, Keynsham, Bristol, BS31 1SA

• Street Police Station: 5 – 7 West End Street, Street, Somerset, BA16 0LG

• Wincanton Police Station: 14 Market Place, Wincanton, BA9 9LH

• Frome Enquiry Office: Frome Library, Justice Lane, Frome, BA11 1BE

• Nailsea Police Station: Pound Lane, Nailsea, BS48 2NN

• Weston super Mare: Town Hall, Walliscote Grove Road, Weston, BS23 1UJ

• Wellington: Victoria Street, Wellington, Somerset, TA21 8HR

• Yeovil: Horsey Lane, Yeovil, BA20 1SN

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