TAUNTON Deane Borough Council has spent more than £1.2 million of taxpayers’ money on consultancy fees in 10 months, the County Gazette can reveal, including on the Firepool and Coal Orchard redevelopment projects.

Critics have slammed the expenditure as a ‘waste of money’ and called on the council to progress the two projects, but the council claims if it hadn’t spent the vast sums, the projects ‘wouldn’t be where we are now.’


READ MORE: CLARIFICATION: Council responds to County Gazette story on consultants' fees


Figures obtained by the County Gazette reveal during the last financial year, from April 1 2016 until February 15 this year, TDBC hired eight consultancy firms at a total cost of £619,485.65 to advise on projects including Firepool and Coal Orchard.

The firms consulted were specialists in architecture, design, project management services, valuation services and market research.

As well as Firepool and Coal Orchard, the eight firms advised on other issues such as the Blackbrook pool, Thales site, customer access, a stock condition survey, a depot relocation and LDO enabling.

The figures also show £140,619.59 was spent on consultants advising on “transformation” plans, £11,933,00 was spent on a proposed relocation of the council’s headquarters at Deane House, which they later decided to refurbish, £13,682.92 on the council’s communications strategy and a further £72,422 spent on ‘client and succession planning project management’ relating to the controversial South West One scheme.

In total, the council spent £1,257,079.32, plus a further £670,537 on temporary agency staff.

Somerset County Gazette:
Work has yet to begin on the main Firepool site

The long-running Firepool saga has split opinion in the town, with seemingly no progress being made on the huge site on Priory Bridge Road.

It is believed the project will cost £105 million in total to build, create 1,500 jobs and generate millions once completed.

Coal Orchard is a £50 million development to build new shops, homes, work spaces and restaurants at the site.


RELATED: COMMENT: Taunton is tired of waiting


The money spent on Firepool and Coal Orchard has sparked criticism, after the first planning application for the former market site complete with supermarket, hundreds of homes, a cinema and retail outlets was rejected in August last year.

However, the County Gazette understands developers St Modwen are preparing to re-submit the application to planners imminently.

Cllr Ian Morrell, an independent councillor at TDBC, slammed the council for spending so much money on consultants.

He said: “It’s a total waste of money.

“People are now scared their Project Taunton programme is failing and are trying to throw all the money they can at it in a last ditch effort to try and get something moving forward.

“But, the problem is they are throwing all this money at a strategy that is 10, 15 years old and the time and the markets have moved on.

“They are piecemeal projects. By failing to concentrate on one particular area they are taking a scatter gun ap- proach to it all and failing to put anything together.

“It’s worrying this amount of money is being spent, they are just scrambling,trying to get things done and getting nowhere.”


RELATED: Click here to see the response from the council


Cllr Simon Coles, leader of the Lib Dem group at TDBC, said: “It is regrettable we have got no further forward with either Coal Orchard or Firepool.

“Firepool is a difficult one to bring to fruition.

“The cost of the consultants is very regrettable, and I think we do really need to look at how we are bringing these schemes forward, and why are we using consultants to do it.”

Somerset County Gazette:
Coal Orchard is set for redevelopment

Cllr Jefferson Horsley, shadow portfolio holder for economic development for the Lib Dems at TDBC, said: “It’s very frustrating we don’t seem to be getting any closer to a solution to bring these two projects forward.

“In each case, the more money spent on them, the more we need to recoup, making them commercially unviable.

“It’s all very unclear, and that’s the frustrating part of it all. If we were to employ our own in-house specialist, it would mean we have more control over it all.

“Firepool has been a frustration for some time, and Coal Orchard really worries me because it’s so close to the town centre and we need to get that done quickly.”

John O’Connell, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said councils need to ‘make sure that these engagements are actually good value for taxpayers’.