Somerset Council has no money available to make improvements to its planning enforcement team as its projected budget gap for next year swells to £40m.
The council has struggled in recent times to adequately hold developers and landowners to account through the planning enforcement process - admitting in January that it was relying on agency staff from a district council in Staffordshire to carry out much of this work.
A request by Conservative councillors in July for a full review into the enforcement service was rebuffed by the ruling Liberal Democrats, who argued that plans to improve the service were already in the works.
But officers have now revealed that there is no scope for investing further money into the enforcement team until the council can get its wider spending under control as the budget approaches.
The review revealed that the average number of cases allocated to each enforcement officer (either in-house or agency) has risen from 155 in November 2025 to 169 in May 2026 - an " unsustainable" rise of just over nine per cent.
Read more
The council has introduced a triage service which seen around 85 per cent of initial enquiries "shut down without further investigation" - with town and parish councils being encouraged to handle lower-level matters before escalating it with the enforcement team.
The review proposed investing an additional £475,000 to restructure and improve the service, including £270,000 to hire an additional six enforcement officers, £105,000 in one-off agency support to tackle the backlog of cases, and £100,000 for additional legal services.
However, Chris Hall, the council's executive director for community, place and economy, said he could not countenance this additional spending at present in light of the council's wider budgetary pressures.
Mr Hall made his case when the council's climate, environment and place scrutiny committee convened in Taunton on October 15.
He said: "Our officers are effectively caught by the financial position of the planning, department, my department (community, place and economy) and the wider council.
"We are in an overspend situation in-year and we have a budget gap moving forward next year.
"There are not currently mitigations in place that bring any of those three that I've just described in on budget by the end of the year.
"Approving this will only add additional pressure both in-year and to the budget gap for next year - so we wouldn't be recommending that to you at this stage."
Bill Cotton, the council's interim service director for planning, said he sympathised with the "unhappiness" experienced by local residents and councillors over the lack of enforcement - unhappiness which has been expressed at numerous public council meetings.
He said: "I think we've got to the point at which we acknowledge that the enforcement service is not what we'd like it to be.
"There's a lot of unhappiness with councillors and members of the community who feel that the planning service is being undermined in terms of our control of the situation.
"We have got some proposals - but it's just a money problem. There is no money, so we are caught."
Councillor Norman Cavill (Conservative, Monkton and North Curry) said that the council needed to find new ways of generating income in order to provide the service with the funding it needed.
He said: "I think we need to look creatively at how do we get some extra money. There is no incentive for the developers to do things on time.
"We've had it in my patch with Persimmon for a long time, and we now have it with Bellway on the site that went to appeal in Creech St. Michael.
"They were told to put pavements, safety measures on the road and active travel routes before they built the houses, and they've just gone straight ahead and built houses.
"We really do need to address it, and we need to change how we raise money to assist enforcement."
Bellway Homes is in the process of delivery of 100 homes at the Celtic Gardens estate on North End, between the M5 and the existing homes in Creech St. Michael.
Councillor Dave Mansell (Green, Upper Tone) said: "It's good to see the report - and then obviously it's not good to hear that the funding's not there.
"It's a high-profile service and the public see people getting away with things which they shouldn't - we do need to be on top of this.
"It's a bad look for the council and it's a bad outcome when enforcement is not being done as I'm sure you would all wish - so I do hope the funding's found."
Councillor Andy Dingwall (Conservative, Bridgwater East and Bawdrip) said he was "extremely disappointed" with this turn of events.
He added: "My motion was voted down in the council chamber on the specific argument that the administration will put together a plan to deal with the backlog in planning enforcement.
"I don't think this is a step in the right direction. I don't think what we've got here is a plan, because there's no money to enforce it."
Lizzie Watkin, the council's chief financial officer, gently reminded councillors of the scale of financial issues facing the authority ahead of setting its annual budget in February.
She said: "We have £29m to find in this year - we have to look everywhere in terms of services stopping, cuts all over the place to be able to address that.
"We are still forecasting a £40m budget gap for next year. These are serious numbers that we have to tackle as an organisation - this needs urgent action and absolute focus on the organisation.
"I absolutely understand the want and the wishes, in terms of this being the right thing for our public and our communities to drive forward the right type of behaviours that we really want in our place.
"However, we have a massive financial strain on the organisation that has to be addressed first and foremost.
"Otherwise, we'll be in a position where those decisions aren't in our hands and that's the thing that we do not want to do."
Share