2. More than 70 cuts at Somerset County Council

More than 70 areas could be cut as Somerset County Council aims to save £15M by 2020

Two days' detailed coverage of the most devastating cuts in recent memory

Originally published: September 4, 2018


Fewer roads will be gritted, with no grit supplies at the roadside for the whole winter.
Vulnerable people trying to get into the work of work could be given less support.
Taunton's Park and Ride could close indefinitely, with part of the site being used for transport to Hinkley Point C.
These are just some of the possible consequences if Somerset County Council pushes ahead with a further £15M of cuts to public services by 2020.

Council leader David Fothergill said that the council was now at "the very sharp end" of austerity, and that these measures were essential to secure the council's long-term financial sustainability.
He added that the council's predicament had been caused by an increase in costs and demand for services, coupled with "massive" reductions in funding from central government.
Read the full story here.

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Alarm bells had begun ringing in the months prior to September about the county council's finances. In March, I reported on the council's dwindling reserves, based on information provided by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In May I broke the story about council leader David Fothergill wanting to re-examine the prospect of a unitary authority for Somerset to generate further savings (here) - a proposal which residents had rejected back in 2007. And in July I was one of the first to report when the council's official auditors warned the council could "run out of money in the next two or three years" if no action was taken to curb its spending (here and here).

While the cuts themselves were not a surprise, what was surprising was the extend of the cuts - £15M up to March 2020, covering every aspect of the services it provided to taxpayers and in many cases scaling its provision back to a statutory minimum. It therefore seemed entirely appropriate, and in the public interest, to publish as much detail as possible on the cuts as soon as the information became available. We ran this piece detailing the cuts in full and subsequently I put together a number of follow-ups singling out aspects which would affect large numbers of people (e.g. the closure of the park and ride and the delays to local flood prevention).

This article was shared on our website more than 250 times and received positive coverage on social media in the run-up to the meetings where the cuts were discussed. In addition to the specific follow-ups mentioned, I followed up this coverage by live-tweeting both of these meetings and provided full reports after each day's proceedings. My coverage both before and during these meetings won plaudits from within the Local Democracy Reporting Service and from The Guardian columnist John Harris, who attended both meetings and used my tweets and reports to pick up the results.