Dear Editor,

It is often said of a 'bad work-person, they will 'blame their tools'. Or in the case of a 'bad organisation', the same kind of thinking will all too quickly, 'blame the system'. But, to my mind, it's all very much a cliché, and not necessarily true..

And a case very much in point locally is that of our Somerset Council, which is often being heavily criticised for awful financial mismanagement when this is not really the case; it is NOT the ‘bad council’, it really is ‘the system’. And maybe there are still those who will declare, “well they would say that, wouldn’t they..?” But, if you examine the facts carefully, the evidence is actually scanty.

So let’s unpack that: one un-fixable issue which returns time and again, is the fact that our unitary council - and many, many others of all political persuasions and none, we must remember! - is legally responsible for covering the spiralling costs of vital community social care costs, which total very nearly 70% of all Council Tax receipts. Yes, effectively about 2/3rds of annual revenue which cannot then be spent on anything else like schools, parks, public transport &c. What is more, this social care responsibility is legally enforced by central government, and although services are much-needed by local people, central government gives no routine subsidy to help with this. So.. a 'cash-strapped reality', nothing to do with being a ‘bad council’, clearly ‘the system’.

Coupled with this is the current crazy, hap-hazard practice of allocating central government funding by ‘competitive tender’ for specific purposes. This means that Somerset may ‘hit the jack-pot’ from time to time with a certain ring-fenced sum awarded for, say, the recently purchased electric bus-fleet, but then receives no accompanying funding to fix the potholed roads the new vehicles run on or the decrepit bus-shelters local people sometimes wait in and complain about! It simply doesn’t make sense to work in this piecemeal way but, it is what councils and councillors - and ultimately all of us! - are stuck with. Again, not a ‘bad council’ simply a ‘broken system' of local funding.

Add to this the fact that for many years here in Somerset, our council taxes were kept artificially low for political reasons, which led to a slow, steady process of decay, all too visible today, when those irresponsible pigeons of chronic underfunding are coming home to roost in our crumbling school buildings, poor road infrastructure etcetera... Again not our present council acting 'badly', rather an inheritance of funding problems coupled with a bad 'system' again.

And compared with other local authorities - however difficult some may find it to believe! - Somerset is actually doing okay with the latest council tax increase of 4.99 per cent. And that is against the physical backdrop of our county being the 5th largest in the UK. Put bluntly, that means pretty much the same money just literally has to go further, stretching out to serve our more remote rural areas. Equally, many other county authorities are stuck in a similar boat for the reasons given above, it's a countrywide issue. And there are no ‘quick-fixes’ on the horizon any time soon, whatever is being promised around election times.

So...let’s just all take a deep breath and think a bit more carefully before assuming that any seemingly ‘bad outcome’ in how things are organised locally is the fault of our present unitary council, and remember it's more than likely ‘the system’. Also that our council is made-up of other ordinary people just like you and me, doing the best they can.

Let's all bring a bit of understanding to a difficult situation and start giving them a break?

JF Pocock

Wellington

Dear Editor,

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