Somerset Council has defended the "realistic and achievable" pace of its £20m transformation programme as it seeks to balance its budget.
The council has been making significant changes to the ways it runs local services in a bid to cut costs, curb rising demand and close a projected £73m budget gap.
The council appointed Newton Consulting in September to oversee the next phase of its transformation programme (dubbed 'Inspiring Innovation'), which aims to deliver significant savings over the next three to four years.
Taunton resident Chris Mann has been deeply critical of the programme, echoing auditors' warnings that the council was moving too slowly and may have already lost too many of its best managers.
Deputy leader Liz Leyshon responded that the council was "confident that we have the right approach" and assured Mr Mann that all business cases for the programme would come through the relevant committees before their implementation.
Mr Mann raised the issue when the council's executive committee met at County Hall on January 7.
He said: "Initiating your redundancy programme before completing a transformation plan was surely a bad choice, because you may have lost good managers needed to run wider departments.
"We do not know why the council did not plan what is really the perfectly normal business merger achieved by Wiltshire Council 15 years ago.
"Was it because the Liberal Democrat leadership are still ideologically opposed to one unitary council? Or perhaps this was the way the new highly paid chief executive proposed, and the leadership were not prepared to reject this?"
External auditors Grant Thornton warned in December 2025 that the council had to go faster to change the way it delivered services, issuing three statutory recommendations or 'red cards' against the authority.
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Mr Mann continued: "You are paying Newton Consulting up to £20m for advice to ‘improve services, enhance workforce experience and achieve long-term financial sustainability'.
"Two months before a detailed savings plan is needed, all they have come up with is ‘a whole council diagnostic' to 'set up a programme for success'. This seems the complete opposite of ‘at pace’.
"The programme requires a savings to investment ratio of three to one to be successful - meaning £135m in savings for the £45m ultimately spent.
"What specific services are lagging - and what is the 'Plan B' if the £135m target isn't met?"
Deputy leader Liz Leyshon said that the transformation programme was "realistic and achievable", and the rate of return of investment would vary from one business case to another.
She said: "Many councils working now on local government reorganisation are facing up to what is anything but a normal business merger.
"They are now looking to us for evidence of our actions taken from 2022 onwards.
"I have found it personally instructive to hear former leaders of other council refer to a period of eight years as necessary to create a stable sustainable council.
"That was before the increase in demand for, and cost of, adult placements, children's services and homelessness - and before the impact of austerity, before the global pandemic, before Brexit, before increases in interest rates and before inflation."
Ms Leyshon (who represents the Street division) said that "detailed plans with milestones" would come before the council's corporate and resources scrutiny in due course.
She added: "Taken as a whole, we will be seeking over a period of three to four years a return of three pounds saved for every one pound invested.
"The ambition is realistic and achievable, based on the experience of many local authorities up and down the land.
"It is obvious that some business cases will be enabling in nature and not achieve the stated return on investment when considered alone.
"However, these enabling actions will allow other business cases to achieve greater savings. I am confident that we have the right approach."
Ms Leyshon confirmed that £1.5m would be paid to Newton for the "diagnostic" element of the transformation programme, which will be completed by the end of January.
Monitoring officer Alyn Jones confirmed that around £50m of savings had been delivered since the council was officially created in April 2023.
Of this, around £33m came from the first phase of its transformation programme, which concluded in April 2025 with the loss of around 300 staff.
Councillor Theo Butt Philip, portfolio holder for transformation, human resources and localities, said that the transformation programme was focused on improving how services were delivered, rather than purely on cutting costs.
He said: "It is possible to deliver better services and spend less money - principally if we look at means of prevention, so people can continue to live their lives without requiring larger intervention later on."
Councillor Sarah Wakefield, portfolio holder for adult's services, housing and homelessness, warned that going too quickly with transformation ran the risk of reducing the council's ability to properly respond to residents' needs.
She said: "We are working at pace, but pace doesn’t mean running so that your shoes fall off and you can't breathe at the end of it - it means getting there and actually still being alive at the end of it."
Council leader Bill Revans added: "There is a difference between pace and haste.
"What I'm seeing is people being innovative within the council, working in partnership with our transformation partners to be able to produce the results that we need to see.
"I do have confidence that this process is producing a timely, at-pace solution to our issues."
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