A BADLY-handled redundancy programme during the merger of two councils led to "knowledge drain" during a mass exodus of staff, a report concludes.

A scathing independent audit of the transformation programme to scrap Taunton Deane Borough and West Somerset Councils to form Somerset West and Taunton Council says costs have seriously overshot, while predicted savings have not been met.

The South West Audit Partnership report what happened in the run up to the setting up of the new authority makes nine areas where lessons can be learned.

It is critical of the councils' decision to allow voluntary redundancy to all staff as it led to long-serving staff opting for pay offs and increased pensions "particularly with uncertainty with what exactly the new roles would actually entail", resulting in the risk of "knowledge drain".

The report adds that redundancies should have been delayed or staggered until new processes were in place and savings have been achieved.

There was a lack of regular reviews during the transformation and a number of members claim they were kept in the dark about what was happening.

The report authors say they were unable to interview senior staff and councillors as they were no longer with the council.

They say: "With a transformation programme as ambitious and complex as this, it is imperative that it is adequately planned and resourced, especially where it is being driven by a date for completion.

"The decision to allow voluntary redundancy for all staff ultimately undermined the transformation programme as it gave the authority little control over resource retention and more importantly cost control over redundancies."

Redundancy costs have hit £6.35million compared to the original estimate of £3.7million, while predicted annual savings of £1.8million have not been achieved.

SWT leader Cllr Federica Smith-Roberts, said: "The SWAP audit report paints a very stark picture of the unreasonably ambitious and intrinsically risky programme the former councils embarked on.

"It has been important for us to understand how this process was implemented and why it went wrong so that we can focus our efforts as a new council to deliver the services residents need.

"We need to draw a clear line between what happened at TDBC and WSC, and what is happening now at SWT. It's not about the past, it's about learning lessons and looking forward."

David Orr, who has consistently criticised the transformation process, said: "What is it about the word 'transformation' that causes so many councillors to lose their critical faculties?

"We were promised in 2016 that Somerset and Taunton Deane councillors had learned lessons from the failed joint venture South West One with IBM that lost at least £69million.

"By 2019, we now learn that many of the same councillors have watched an all too similar failure in the 'transformation' project to merge two district councils into a new one called Somerset West and Taunton Council.

"Yet again the hubristic promises of 'magic IT' and electronic self-service have led to expensive failures.

"The TDBC leader John Williams is no longer in power and the chief executive Penny James, who was one of the architects of the failed joint venture South West One, left with a massive pay off.

"We need to stop paying for failure and why can't we claw back some of these huge payouts for failed chief executives?

"Taunton Deane Borough Council paid a consultancy called Ignite over £1million to be sold a 'recipe for failure'.

"I hope that our new Somerset West and Taunton Council will seek to get some of that money back from Ignite."