“I wouldn’t touch it with a forty-foot barge pole”, was Cllr Chris Dando’s verdict on suggestions Bath & North East Somerset Council should rejoin its old county colleagues in a new super-authority.

Cllr Dando sat on Avon County Council when it was disbanded, and said he knows from experience that such shake-ups can cause more problems than they solve.

Cllr Dando claimed Somerset County Council was only looking to its wealthier neighbours to the north to help prop it up – but what is really needed is more Government funding.

“I’ve been doing this twenty-plus years,” said the one-time Labour group leader. “There have been a number of changes, and they have not all been positive.

“The cuts to local government have left a lot of local authorities that were in financial difficulty in a much worse situation. Northamptonshire County Council has effectively gone bankrupt.

“A lot of councils are sending smoke signals, saying they are close to that. Somerset County Council needs money quickly. It is looking at other authorities with assets.”

He said there is a “growing crisis” in social care, as it faces increasing costs and swelling demand from an ageing population, but it is not a budget that can be capped.

“There are also more schools converting to academies, meaning they get their funding directly from Government, which means the local authorities that had controlled them lose their economies of scale.

“These issues, plus poor investment decisions, have combined with a shake-up of how councils get their income from central Government – grants have been cut but local authorities now keep the business rates they collect.”

Cllr Dando said: “Somerset is in trouble. They have broadly spent all the reserves they can. They are looking at how they can make savings by getting bigger to spread their costs.

“They could scrap all the district councils and bring them under Somerset County Council, or you could split it up into three units. They look at B&NES Council and North Somerset Council because they have some money.

“I wouldn’t touch it with a forty-foot barge pole. There is no harm in thinking about what a merger would look like, but it has to be done for the right reasons. Local authorities have to be based on where people relate to – where do they work? Where do they do their shopping?”

He said Bath and North East Somerset residents have more of a connection to Wiltshire, Bristol and South Gloucestershire, and even physically getting to parts of Somerset is difficult on public transport, adding: “If you moved where decisions are made from Bath to Somerset, you are effectively disenfranchising a whole load of people.

“Lessons need to be learned from the break-up of Avon County Council. There were issues of not understanding how much it was going to cost. Quite a lot of the debt is still on the books.”

Wells MP, James Heappey, suggested B&NES Council should merge with its neighbours in the Mendips, but Cllr Dando disagreed, suggesting that a lot of people do not travel there.

“If you’re going to do local government properly, it has to connect to people in a way that makes a difference to them,” Cllr Dando said.

“When you go out canvassing, the one thing people always ask is what they get from the council. If you’re geographically remote [from the decision-making], that gets worse.”

As well as saying B&NES Council and Mendips should join forces, Mr Heappey suggested a merger between Sedgemoor and North Somerset, and that the southern part of the county should come together as another authority.

Cllr Dando argued that it makes more sense for B&NES Council to merge with another West of England authority – Bristol, South Gloucestershire or North Somerset.

But he added: “The 600lb gorilla is Government funding. No amount of amalgamation will make the savings we need to meet increased demand. You can reorganise all you like, but there comes a point where the risks outweigh the benefits.

“It was a mistake to break up Avon County Council. It would be a mistake of equal measure to reorganise Somerset without thinking of the consequences.”

B&NES Council leader, Cllr Tim Warren, said he would be open to a merger with another authority – but only if it is in the interests of residents. He rejected the idea it could be “swallowed” into a single body for Somerset.