Somerset this week: 29 November 2024

Somerset Council's accounting chaos exposed, more money for Somerset buses, and more farmland is lost to development. Plus news stories from Bridgwater, Glastonbury, Wells and Chard.

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Shambles

The attempt to bring five systems from five councils together into one new Somerset Council was a shambles. We believe that statement can be justified by the latest evidence provided by Somerset Council’s external auditors, Grant Thornton.

Prior to this week, the auditors have hinted at the problems and we have had to dig quite deep into the statements to get an idea of what went wrong.

However with the publication of the South Somerset District Council (SSDC) accounts and Grant Thornton’s Audit Findings Report on Tuesday this week, the full scale of the problems has been laid out in unambiguous fashion.

Although the report is published in connection with the SSDC audit, it lays out very clearly the failings relating to the way the accounts of the four districts and one county council were merged.

The auditors identified a number of what they describe as “significant weaknesses” all related to the year spent merging the five councils into one. In other words, weaknesses that have affected the new Somerset Council because of a lack of pace and a failure to implement new systems properly.

Among the weaknesses they identified were:

• problems with implementing the transformation programme (bringing cost savings together and merging new teams from the five old ones) at scale and pace.

• problems with governance over the disposal of investment properties (remember the new authority inherited a portfolio worth just under £300m).

• While developing the new Microsoft Dynamics accounting system, not resolving outstanding issues at pace.

• There is a need to urgently implement proper risk management and fraud prevention processes.

• Not developing proper purchasing policies and contract management policies (essential to an organisation that is desperate to save money).

• A need to implement proper procedures for benchmarking performance.

In short, the auditors paint a picture of an organisation in chaos.

Local authorities don’t really do sales, their activity is focused on spending. That is what they are there for. The fact that Somerset Council don’t have good enough purchasing policies; lack a good enough fraud prevention system; and lack pace when it comes to implementing their financial system and transformation programme should indeed be major causes of concern.

The auditors also commented on the specifics of the SSDC audit too. Once again the work by council staff was riddled with errors. The auditors note that Huish Park was accounted for incorrectly and that “a large number of adjustments (which is shorthand for errors) have been identified” as part of their work.

They are not kidding. The auditors list 12 pages of adjustments required to be made to correct errors made by the Council’s accounting staff.

Once again the council got the treatment of SSDC Opium Power and its subsidiaries wrong in the accounts. By our count that’s the third year in a row they have got it wrong.

We are always told about hard-working staff, a lack of continuity, a determination to finalise the accounts by the deadline. Yet the facts in this case are simple:

• deadline after deadline has been missed

• and the accounts are full of errors

And of all the recommendations to management made by the auditors last time they audited the accounts, three had still not been actioned.

Is this good enough?

Even some of the lower risk items identified almost border on the farcical. The auditors struggled to get hold of the register of s106 agreements. These are agreements for the money developers have committed to pay towards infrastructure when they have their developments approved.

The reason the auditors could not get hold of it (and presumably no Somerset Council staff could either) was because: “it was held by an individual on long term sick leave”.

Which immediately tells you how closely SSDC staff have been following up with developers to make sure they receive the contributions that have been promised. If no-one has been looking at the register, how much money might be owed to the Council?

This is not just an esoteric exercise for auditors and accountants. These things cost real money. Not having good enough purchasing systems can lead to a council spending more on services than it needs to. Especially if they don’t have decent benchmarking systems either.

But there’s a very direct cost in terms of audit fees too. The weaknesses identified and failure to get the accounts “right first time” has meant much more work for the auditors to do.

an extra £75,000 of fees

To date there are an extra £75,000 of fees proposed, for extra testing or extra work caused by delays in preparing the accounts. That’s a bill that Somerset taxpayers will have to pick up. And that isn’t the final total. The auditors have yet to submit a final account to the council.

And this is a council that has told us consistently it is short of money and needs to find savings. That £75,000 of extra cost was entirely avoidable, it is a cost that results from poor quality work and poor quality management.

Anyone who read the Audit Findings Report will be hard pushed to avoid reaching the same conclusion.

Chard Police investigation

As regular readers will be aware, there is currently an investigation by the Police into activities at Chard Town Council. We understand a complaint was brought by an individual town councillor, though not the town council acting as a body.

Indeed the town council have not formally discussed the issue of a complaint at their full council meeting and have not resolved to make one either.

So, when the draft minutes of the September meeting of Chard Town Council appeared it was a surprise to see that the reason the Mayor gave for not answering questions on the Rolley Report was because: “she was not able to comment on the Rolley report or the review of the Rolley report at this time due to an ongoing police investigation”.

This statement is actually untrue.

But then given that the minutes of Chard Town Council quite often misrepresent reality maybe that was where the problem lay?

No. We checked with people who had been at the meeting and they confirmed the Mayor had indeed said she wasn’t able to respond.

Next we asked the Mayor who confirmed that she had indeed given that response to those asking questions about the Rolley Report.

However we also checked with the Police and they told us that they had not given any instruction to the town council to avoid commenting on the report during their investigation.

What the Police did tell us was that it was: “not uncommon for agencies to allow any police involvement to take primacy and wish to wait for that to conclude before commenting on a specific matter.”

What is clear is that the Mayor is able to comment, but has chosen not to. The reasons she chose not to may common, but the fact remains it is a choice. And the minutes misrepresent the situation by saying the Mayor could not comment, when she could, but chose not to.

The distinction between the two is important.

the Mayor is able to comment, but has chosen not to

What the Police may not have been aware of, was that the Rolley Report was adopted by the Council in March 2023. It has been commented on frequently by councillors and the public ever since. Indeed, the council have debated it on at least three other occasions since March 2023.

In short it is not a matter of waiting for the Police investigation before making a comment, because the council have already made numerous comments on it.

The Mayor told us that a response to our questions had been prepared and sent to us. She told us this on 18 November.

We are still waiting to receive it.

Meanwhile we hear that yet another member of staff has handed in their resignation and a request has been made for an Extraordinary Town Council meeting. An agenda appeared briefly on the town council website before vanishing very quickly.

So pretty much business as usual in Chard.

Will new bus funding make a big difference?

We have written on many occasions about the lack of an integrated public transport system in our county. It is rare for bus and train times to co-ordinate and some train stations, notably Castle Cary, have extremely poor bus connections.

Which may have been what was preying on the mind of Sarah Dyke, MP for Glastonbury and Somerton last week when she told The Secretary of State for Transport: “The new funding for bus services in Somerset is welcome, but my constituents often tell me that they need bus-rail links to connect areas not served by train stations. Will the Secretary of State outline the exact conditions for what each tranche of money must be spent on, to allow the council to plan much-needed improvements to services in rural areas?”

Louise Haigh is the current Secretary of State for Transport and she responded positively: “The way the formula has been designed explicitly benefits rural areas, because a third of the allocation is dependent on bus mileage; that is why a number of areas, including Somerset, have done much better out of today’s allocation than in previous years. We are removing the controls that were previously required. All the funding will have to be spent on buses, but we believe it is right that local transport authorities take those decisions themselves rather than being constrained by central diktat from Whitehall.”

Of £83m allocated to the South-West, Somerset is to receive £6.8m. It may have done well compared with previous periods, but it is still very much the poor relation behind Devon (£11.6m) and Cornwall (£10.6m) and indeed only gets a little more than the much smaller BCP authority (£6m).

Unsurprisingly, the biggest share of the new funds goes to the West of England Combined Authority centred on Bristol which gets in excess of £13m.

But does the statement by the Secretary of State that: “it is right that local transport authorities take those decisions” hold true? To date bus companies have a great deal of freedom to choose where to operate and councils are not always allowed to subsidise a failing route.

In essence, the poor quality of integration we have is down to economic choices made by our rail provider, GWR and our bus provider, Buses of Somerset. Ironically given how poor the co-ordination is, they are both owned by the same company, First Group plc.

Castle Cary station - waiting for more buses

Whether we will really get better integrated transport in our county will depend on how much freedom Somerset Council will have with the new funds. If Sarah Dyke is looking for reassurance on that front, Somerset Council believe they have it already.

Sarah Dyke may be unsure of how the money can be used, but Somerset Council is more confident. For instance we asked if they could use the money to subsidise loss-making bus routes.

They told us that: “The Council already supports a large number of loss-making bus routes across the county and the press release issued by the Department for Transport clearly states that this funding is being provided to support, improve and protect crucial bus services in their area and is designed to enhance popular routes and protect rural services, therefore our interpretation of the information we have had so far is that we will be able to use this funding to subsidise loss-making routes in order to protect them.”

this funding is….designed to enhance popular routes and protect rural services

That’s a good start, but the council also confirmed that it is still the case that bus operators can withdraw from any route they consider is not making money.

So can the council operate routes themselves and will this be something they can continue to do with the new money? Their spokesperson told us: “Yes we can, and we already do provide a number of local bus services across the county with our own in-house fleet. We do this by providing these services under section 22 Community Bus Permits, but we understand that the upcoming Buses Bill will give Local Authorities the power to operate their own bus companies if they wish to do so, although the detail on how this is to be achieved is yet to be provided. We understand this information will be contained in the Buses Bill which is to be introduced in the coming weeks.”

So the bottom line appears to be that, increasingly, it will be possible for Somerset Council to provide a more integrated transport system linking buses and trains. They won’t need to rely on First Group plc to do that.

The question many residents will be asking themselves is – will the council actually make the improvements the service needs now they have the power and some money to do it with?

More farmland to go

Once again the lack of any meaningful protection for agricultural land for growing food has been exposed by a planning application before Somerset Council. This application heard on Tuesday, will see the loss of 2.3 hectares of agricultural land to build 52 homes in the village of Henstridge in the south east of the county near the Dorset border.

Of these, 18 will be so-called Affordable Homes.

The irony of this, and so many similar planning applications that Somerset Council’s Area South Committee waves through, is that although the Affordable Homes will not be genuinely affordable for local people, the loss of agricultural land will be very real.

We have reported previously that Somerset Council do not keep a log of agricultural land that has been lost to farming. So the planners and councillors making these decisions are utterly clueless as to the cumulative impact of the loss of land on our ability to grow food. And indeed, you might well think would be an important consideration for the future of our county, indeed for our country.

Yet it barely features in conversation around these applications. Astonishingly for this application the planning officer actually noted that: “It is considered that the loss of approximately 2.3 hectares of 'moderate quality agricultural land' is significant.”

This felt like a major step forward. Until you get to the conclusion where the loss of land is dismissed as not significant enough.

the loss of land is dismissed as not significant enough

But what is perhaps of more significance, is that this decision comes against the background of the Labour budget and the imposition of Inheritance Tax on farms worth over £1m.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the tax, and we accept this is a controversial issue, there is a curiosity here. Farmers claim that to pay the tax, they would have to sell off land that would make their farms unviable.

That seems like a reasonable concern to have. It makes sense that you need a given amount of land to maintain the capacity of the farm to generate income. And that may well require land that could be worth well over £1m.

We might accept then that they need every spare parcel of land to make their farms viable. Yet, at the same time, the vast majority of planning applications coming forward in Somerset are on agricultural land. Not always from large estates, but very often a field here or a field there, as in this instance.

The question we have to ask, is if farmers need every available parcel of land to make their business viable, when they are asked to pay tax, how come they are able to sell off parcels of land when developers come calling.

It is an inherent contradiction in their argument. And it is one that is quite genuinely raising serious questions about the future of farming in Somerset.

Timeless HERoes

MP for Bridgwater, Ashley Fox has nominated Rose Stacey for a Parliamentary Award for women in business. Rose Stacey runs Bridgwater-based business, Timeless Images, with husband Garry taking the photos assisted by Gemma and Abbey.

She and Garry gave up the “day jobs” in 2005 and jumped in with both feet to starting their own business. That takes a lot of guts, as it is not without risk!

Rose has run the business from a studio on Cornhill, Bridgwater since 2007.

MP HERoes celebrates women business owners, linking each MP with a successful woman business owner in their constituency. The intention is to put the spotlight on successful founders and women in business from every sector and from every part of the UK, all championed by their local MP.

Ashley Fox MP with Rose Stacey

But as Ashley Fox stressed, the award was for more than simply running a successful local business: “I was pleased to nominate Rose for this award celebrating women in business. She has built a successful business with Timeless Images and made a significant contribution to the wider business community through her work with the Bridgwater Town Team, Bridgwater Chamber of Commerce, and the annual Snowflakes Christmas event.”

Helene Martin Gee a Parliamentary Adviser and creator of the programme adds: “it’s great that MPs are supporting the award as recognition of the valuable contribution women-led businesses make to the economy and to their local community.”

Rose was invited to Parliament on Wednesday 20 November during Global Entrepreneurship Week to collect her Award. She then joined a roundtable discussion and networking reception with other MP HERoes and met her MP.

Rose told us: “It was fascinating to talk about getting women and girls into business and encouraging the media to paint a positive picture of creating a business. Working with schools and colleges we need to encourage and show what happens in real life giving back to others, especially girls and women.”

Filling in the gaps

Whilst our MPs have been out and about expressing their angst at the problems finding a dentists in Somerset, the board meeting of NHS Somerset (AKA the Integrated Care Board) this Thursday received the benefit of the problems first hand.

Emma King came from Glastonbury to present the issue to the board. Like many other towns in Somerset Glastonbury has no NHS dentist. Emma presented examples of people having to go to other counties or even to intensive care to get emergency treatment.

She put it to the board that in one case she knew of where a patient ended up spending 3 or 4 days in intensive care cannot have been good financial sense.

Surely she suggested, it would have been cheaper to find the money to get a dentist do the work in the first place?

Bernie Marsden responded for the board. He admitted up front he did not have much in the way of good news. There is clearly a lot of work going on and a lot of investigation into how to make things better.

the painful truth is they haven’t cracked the problem

But the painful truth is they haven’t cracked the problem. NHS Somerset are talking to two dental practises in Street to see how they can get local dentists to take on more NHS dental work. And of course to try and recruit new NHS dentists to the area.

There is some £300,000 set aside to pay for more dental work across the county but the fundamental problem is that the last government’s change to the basic dental contract has turned NHS dentists off. They are not choosing to do NHS dental work. This is charged as something called Units of Dental Activity. The price of each unit under that new contract is simply not attractive .

Until the dental contracts are changed, all that NHS Somerset can do is try to add in extra funds as a sweetener to enhance the price paid for a Unit of Dental Activity. And they are still working out how to make that work.

However it was not all doom and gloom. Ms King did want to thank the board for working with local people to get a new pharmacy opened in the town (two had closed down in Glastonbury in 2023) this autumn.

Mr Marsden asked Emma if she would work with the team at NHS Somerset to see what could be done. A collaborative approach blending local advocacy and NHS Somerset resource that worked so well when it came to getting the new pharmacy in place.

For all the positive noises and the offers to work together, one was left with the impression that getting a dentist in the town would be a tougher nut to crack.

Wells MP sticks boot into BT

Wells & Mendip Hills MP, Tessa Munt used the Leader of the House’s usual listing of business for the next week to make a point about the poor service that some of her most vulnerable constituents had received from BT. In particular some elderly residents living on the Levels.

The weekly business update gives MPs the opportunity to raise issues and the Leader can then point them in the direction of where they might best be raised.

Tessa Munt asked for a debate as: “I have constituents who live on the Somerset levels who are 90 years young. They have limited mobility and do not have mobile phones. Three months ago BT cut them off in the process of changing their landline to digital—something they did not request. They do not even have broadband, and they lost access to their emergency alarms. It took a month of pleading by their son and neighbours, and masses of calls. BT said that they were a priority as vulnerable people, but nearly a fortnight ago the landline went off again. Openreach says there is nothing wrong with their copper line, and everyone is trying to get them sorted out. All they want is a decent service on their landline and their old number back. May we have a debate about what BT’s priority register actually means, and how it might improve its service for more vulnerable residents?”

The Leader of the House is Lucy Powell, the Labour Co-op MP for Manchester Central. She didn’t feel a debate was needed but was sure that BT would be listening, if not she would drop them a friendly reminder: “For the hon. Lady’s 90-years-young constituents such issues are incredibly vital and important. We must ensure that the transition to digital is completely inclusive, and that those who rely on landline and analogue systems are also supported, especially when they live in a rural community such as the one she describes. I am sure BT will have heard her question, and if not I will ensure that it has and that it gets a proper service back to those constituents who need it.”

No doubt the constituents have been heard. But what does it say about the state of our infrastructure and service providers if family members have to plead, and MPs have to raise voices in the House of Commons, just to get a decent service for nonagenarians?

It really feels quite shameful.

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