Experts have raised concerns as ministers are set to make final decisions on proposals for local government reorganisation.
Speaking at a discussion hosted by the Institute for Government (IfG) think-tank, it was agreed ministers will have to tread a fine line between recognising local circumstances and giving the same regard to national criteria for each region.
Partner at Grant Thornton, Joanne Brown said: ‘There's a concern and a question about how do you weight that criteria – they have to be consistent in their decision-making.'
Norfolk CC leader Kay Mason Billig added: ‘Whatever happens, it has got to be tailored to the area, I'm really concerned about getting richer areas and poorer areas and a postcode lottery if we're not very careful.'
Brighton and Hove City Council leader Bella Sankey said the current system was ‘dysfunctional' due to separation of services across tiers and that there was a need for ‘the system to be more uniform'.
This would help to build confidence from central government and secure further fiscal devolution.
IfG senior researcher Dr Matthew Fright was sceptical about the savings to be made from reorganisation.
He said there was a risk of ‘baking in inefficiency' where new authorities would be required to align services from their predecessors.
Furthermore, while fewer councils would mean a smaller workforce in the long term, further capacity would be needed for transformation to take place in the coming years.
Dr Fright added: ‘There needs to be further publication on this to justify the claim there is automatically larger economies through larger scale.
‘There is still this gap in terms of public discussion in terms of what is the evidence base surrounding it.'
But Brown said there were ‘elements of evidence' and a ‘clear rationale and business case for driving bigger savings'.
Cllr Sankey contended that while ‘there are clearly savings to be made', Brighton had yet to fully realise the benefits of unitarisation.
