MORE than 130 county council staff have lost their jobs since last September.

It’s one year on since Somerset County Council held an emergency budget meeting, where £15M of cuts of services up to April 2020 were approved despite strong public criticism.

The council began a consultation with staff in August 2018 about possible redundancies, indicating that around 130 jobs could go.

The authority has now revealed a total of 134 staff have left the organisation since September 1, 2018 – though not all may have directly left as a result of the cuts.

The cuts were agreed by the council’s cabinet at Shire Hall on September 12, 2018 – a meeting which lasted all day and was attended by vocal protestors.

Council leader David Fothergill said at the time the cuts were “the most difficult set of decisions we have ever had to consider”.

He added: “The government model for funding local authorities like ours is completely broken – rural councils do not get the funding they need.”

The council has now confirmed a total of 134 staff have left the organisation since September 1, 2018 – of which 119 were through voluntary redundancy and 15 through compulsory redundancy.

A spokesperson said: “A large proportion of those would have been as a result of September decisions, but some may have been the result of earlier decisions – it depends how long decisions take to put into action and how long any redundancy process takes to go through.”

The council has said it had achieved 98 per cent of the savings that were agreed in September.

Planning is now under-way for the 2020/21 budget following the publication of the government’s comprehensive spending review on September 4.

A spokesperson said: “We’re now planning for the next three years – something made considerably more difficult by not knowing what funding we’re going to have to work with over that period.

“We will continue to lobby for fair funding, with particular emphasis on a long-term funding plan for social care.”