IMPROVEMENTS and savings from streamlining council services across the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area may take longer than anticipated.

Councillors have been told that some of the work in making changes to the new council has been pushed off course by the pandemic.

Even getting hold of the authority remains tricky – according to several ward councillors with phones not being answered quickly or, in some cases, not at all.

The concerns have led to questions about whether moving more services online is the right course to follow, given the area’s age profile.

Cllr Tony Trent said that with an estimated one third of the population not willing, or not up to speed with the internet, the council might consider investing more in the basics – including a working telephone system where residents can quickly find out the information they need.

Cllr Ann Filer said the council needed to improve confidence in being able to contact the council and get the answers they needed – including getting the basics right on the website which she said she should happen soon.

A meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee was told that part of the problem was caused by inheriting systems and equipment which were beyond their ‘best by’ date from the previous councils – although investment was taking place and systems were improving.

It was said a similar problem, including compatibility difficulties, still existed across wide sections of the council’s business software and would take some time to resolve. The council currently has around 30 different systems, costing £500,000 a year to run.

Council leader Cllr Drew Mellor has pledged that to resolve the issues as quickly as possible – although warned that transformation work was still in the early stages and was far more complex than many people realised. He said the Conservative administration was still confident of achieving the necessary savings and was committed to it.

He said the changes, coupled with the pandemic, meant that BCP was undergoing probably the most “important and most ambitious” change programme in local government in the country and was still determined to finding £42m savings annually.

The meeting heard that the only transformation area currently on target was harmonising staff agreements, conditions and wages; that work on the council’s estate, (the properties and land it owns), had slipped by several months although civic offices at Poole and Christchurch were still on course for being ‘re-purposed’ by the end of the year. Financially the council was currently behind with its target savings for the year, but it still believed it could hit the target by the end of the financial year in April.

The council’s savings target include the loss of around 600 jobs over four years although many of these are expected to go through ‘natural wastage’ which normally runs at between 8 and 10 per cent turnover a year.

Former council leader Cllr Vikki Slade said she was worried the council was already struggling to recruit some posts and many staff were unhappy with key staff being lost.

Council leader Drew Mellor denied the claim and said many of the country’s ‘brightest and best’ were being attracted to join the council on its journey towards being a modern, first-class organisation.

“There will be some people uncomfortable with change and that’s not great for everybody, but we are trying to do something amazing. The status quo is not what we are after – what we are after is being an exemplar authority and that’s what we are going to deliver,” he said.