Somerset County Council has announced that 160 employees will be returning from private firm Southwest One.

The move comes following a review in which Ken Maddock, Leader of Somerset County Council, concluded the project was failing. He said: “Southwest One’s accounts year on year show staggering losses and failures to hit modest targets. It’s failing, it’s inflexible and it’s intransigent. We are, therefore, looking at all the options available to us.”

Southwest One was one of the first council shared services, and recently received a multimillion pound bail out from IBM after posting significant losses. Most of the staff returning worked in either human resources or finance.

Liz French, regional organiser for the trade union Unison, told the BBC: "I have been raising issues with the council through Human Resources about what they're likely to do with the staff when they come back. They are saying at the moment there is no proposal to make them redundant but that doesn't mean to say they won't do that in the future, it's a very worrying time for them."