Scheme saves £96m

The local government reorganisation scheme in Dorset has saved more than £90million since 2019.

Dorset Council, the unitary authority which was created by amalgamating five district councils and the former county council, announced that the total saving was £96million in four years.

The savings were achieved by bringing together similar services, reducing duplication and costs, increasing efficiency, and reducing the number of councillors and senior officer roles.

The council says that savings made to date have been reinvested into essential frontline services, and claims this has protected them from cuts, and focused on sustainable local services over the longer-term.

“This includes children’s social care, road maintenance, libraries, housing, planning and adult social services,” said the council.

It added that many of the savings had been driven by its transformation programme, which has redesigned services with the aim of providing a better experience for residents and more efficient operations with lower costs.

It projects there will be a further £17.4million saved over the next three years.

The idea behind using interest rates as a lever is to slow spending. It suggests we are all throwing our money around like the infamous ‘loadsamoney’ character by Harry Enfield in the 1980s.

But this simply is not the case – especially for the cohort of people most affected by this device.

Once you factor in student loans reducing net income, the massive cost of childcare and energy bills at their highest level, it is obvious that 20th century solutions simply will not work for this very modern problem.

To hear the Prime Minister suggest we should ‘hang in there’ and that he is ‘100% on it’ shows just how out of touch this government is.

As we enter the 13th (unlucky for some) year of this government they are out of ideas, out of touch and out of time. More radical thinking is needed, more honesty about how we got here and most importantly a change of government. They may not have all the answers, but we cannot keep limping on, one by-election at a time, dramas and scandals emerging round every corner, public sector workers striking for a fair deal.

We need to rebuild trust; we need to regain energy and we need to press the reset button and have a General Election without delay.