THE amount being spent to transition Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole councils into one authority has been criticised by a residents’ association president.

Work to merge the three organisations has so far been estimated to cost more than £9m, although not all of the required funding has been worked out.

The main motive for local government reorganisation in Dorset was to reduce council spending, but the cost of the mergers so far has attracted criticism.

The shadow executive committee is being asked to approve a requirement of just under £8m to cover the cost of the next phase of work at its meeting this morning (Wednesday).

However, Branksome Park, Canford Cliffs and District Residents’ Association president John Sprackling said that the sum was “enormous” when the council merger was prompted by a need to cut costs.

“The whole point of the thing [local government reorganisation] is to save money,” he said.

“When you look closely at what they’re spending, it’s £7-8m and I thought that was enormous.

“They said the original figure was £11m so it was under-budget but it seems an awful lot of money to be spending.

“The pay-offs could be enormous.

“What they’re going to say is ‘we’re not paying them, it will come out of the superannuation fund’, but we pay for that.”

At the end of September, £700,000 had been spent on work to establish the new council, including £46,000 on the process of appointing a new chief executive.

However, officers are estimating that they will need £7,936,160 for the next stages of work and are asking members of the shadow executive committee to approve the allocation.

Included in the sum is £3m towards staffing budgets to carry out the additional work needed and an extra £750,000 for IT work on top of the initial £500,000 estimation.

The three existing councils set aside £1.16m ahead of the shadow authority coming into force, taking the total budgeted cost to just over £9m.

A business case drawn up for the merger estimated the process would cost £11.8m and while the budget is below that so far, it does not include redundancy costs which have yet to be established.

The next round of funding, if approved by the shadow executive committee, will be shared between the existing three councils.