BOURNEMOUTH'S benefits and tax collection service could be partially merged with the Stour Valley and Poole Partnership (SVPP) in a bid to save more than £400,000.

The latter group administers council tax and benefits for Poole, Christchurch, East Dorset and North Dorset councils, while the South Dorset Partnership handles the rest of the county.

Officers across Dorset have been working on proposals to merge Bournemouth with SVPP, or to create a new countywide service, with savings in both cases predicted to come largely from a reduction in senior staff.

However, while these proposals are now on hold as the Government is considering the Future Dorset proposal to merge all councils into two new unitaries, a limited partnership between Bournemouth and SVPP could save £425k for 2018/19.

A report prepared for Bournemouth's cabinet by chief financial officer Adam Richens states: "Similar to the Dorset-wide business case it is considered that progressing to a full partnership between Bournemouth and SVPP would not be pragmatic at this time due to the need to consider the opportunity as part of any wider change to local government in Dorset.

"However, it is considered that the savings identified for 2018/19 can be delivered by Bournemouth and the SVPP sharing resources and delivering efficiencies by working together.

"This alignment could be used as a building block for a Dorset-wide partnership.

"The intention would be to open up a voluntary redundancy process as a mechanism to facilitate this change and to extend the current secondment arrangement adopted for the partnership manager role."

Bournemouth council operates its own service. It was previously run by Kier Services but was brought back in-house in 2016 - saving £2.9m per year according to the council.

The service already shares a partnership manager with SVPP, saving £75k, and enforcement, saving £25k.

According to a business case prepared by officers from the three services, forming a Dorset-wide benefits and tax service could save £1.3m over four years, while merging Bournemouth with SVPP alone would save £1m.

A partnership covering the whole county would be the second largest in the UK, while a Bournemouth/SVPP partnership would be the sixth largest.

BLOB Over the current financial year Bournemouth council has spent £3.5m on its service, while Poole has spent £2.6m, Christchurch £849k, East Dorset £956k and North Dorset £849k on SVPP for a total of £5.2m.

Note that Bournemouth handles 26 per cent of the county's total tax and benefits caseload, and SVPP 45 per cent.