The following information regarding the Liberal Democrat Council's plans for dealing with the declared Financial Emergency has been provided by our Conservative Unitary Councillor for Watchet and Stogursey, Rosemary Woods,
"As many of you will know from the local newspapers, Somerset Council have declared a Financial Emergency, which basically means they are running out of money and are very carefully looking at all their assets to see how savings can be made. As a Conservative I understood when we handed the County over to the Liberal Democrats it had a balanced Budget, so if we had continued in Power we would have managed the County in a different
way and avoided the situation we now find ourselves in.
As a member of the Council I have found it difficult to understand how the situation is being resolved but in the last week, I have been invited to a meeting that has been held to clarify the route that as a Council we are pursuing. We have got rationalization; like in my own patch disposing of some buildings, like our local Industrial Estate, which we used to encourage small businesses to employ local people. The other very high profile operation is reducing our workforce by firstly Voluntary redundancies, including our Monitoring Officer who ran the finances for the Council and replacing him with a contractor who will do part of his role, at a greater cost. We are reducing our work force by restructuring how we run the Council. Senior posts have been rationalized and our way of working is being transformed by using apps to ask questions of the Council. For example if I want to tell the Council that a pot
hole needs repairing I go to the Highways app and explain where it is, how deep it is and the effect it is having. The process of reducing our workforce will move from the senior personnel to the lower grades by the end of September. This will be followed by a period of 45 days consultation where we will consult with our staff, the Unions, and other statutory bodies about what happens, this should reduce duplication of staff and bring down management costs. I am told that the Council is managing this in a way that should support our staff and mean that the knowledge of those leaving us will be transferred so that we will not lose the knowledge that is entrapped in staff that have a great deal of experience.
We have a single point of contact for those who have not got the capability to use IT which is by phone 0300 123 2224.
Interestingly one of the highest risks to our county is ‘data and technology’ which as I see it means that if we do not put the information on-line then we will not be able to recall it!"
