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A few more jigsaw pieces for local government reorganisation (LGR) landed on the sector's table last month for four out of five devolution priority programme (DPP) areas.Hampshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk are now clear on the shape and number of their new unitary authorities.Ministers rejected counties' proposals for countywide unitaries, opting instead for 16 unitaries to add to the two already announced for Surrey. They also set out proposals for four unitaries for East Sussex, Brighton & Hove and West Sussex that would expand Brighton and Hove. This expansion, according to the Government, is aimed at providing more housing and better opportunities for economic growth.The decision by the centre to turn its back on countywide unitaries left angry politicians at Essex CC on the brink of a legal challenge – and the possibility of other counties following suit remains.So, what does the still unfinished puzzle signal for the 14 two-tier areas (see box below) that handed in their LGR proposals to government last month? Is reorganisation still on course for successful delivery, and to what extent will Labour's precarious political position steer the next swathe of decisions expected before the summer recess?Labour is less than a month away from elections on 7 May that polling analysts Britain Elects are predicting will ‘be absolutely terrible for the Tories. But a total bloodbath for Labour'. Chief executive of think-tank Localis Jonathan Werran believes political considerations are to the fore, and that a swerve away from countywide unitaries will also be a feature of the next LGR decision round.Werran said local government secretary Steve Reed in his statement to Parliament on 25 March ‘says these announcements don't set a precedent' for the other 14 areas going through reorganisation. ‘I say it does.'‘Just follow the geography [for a countywide unitary] and look at the Key Cities map where you've got university cities or large towns. They're cities in rural seas. They would be condemning themselves to be ruled by Reform UK or the Conservatives. Because although you've got your Oxfords, your Cambridges, your Coventrys, the mass of votes are outside those urban centres and they [Labour] don't have the sniff of a hope of political control.'So does he believe a move away from county unitaries has been driven by political pragmatism? ‘Yes. Think about Kent being denied DPP status from the outset. Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk would have gone Reform UK. Anything to deny the opposition a platform is partisan, But that's politics, that's showbusiness, folks.'He concluded countywide unitaries are going to ‘die on the altar of Labour's hopes of retaining any control in the university towns and cities where they've got more than any slim hope of being re-elected in the next 10 to 20 years.'Reform UK's head of local government delivery Ben Bradley told The MJ: ‘Given that Labour are now ignoring their own initial logic and criteria [for LGR] – which it said was about financial sustainability and saving money – it's hard to see where these latest proposals are coming from apart from the politics. Trying to carve out places they think they can still win. If so it's an appalling abuse of power with huge risks to local councils and services.'Looking at LGR's possible final outcome, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) could have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag on whether county councils will be broken up in all areas by setting out how the £63m in transition funding will be allocated to new unitaries. Each new unitary will get at least £900,000, with ‘a small central reserve' held back to be used later for targeted support if needed. Assuming 15%, or £9m, is retained, that leaves an assumption of 38 unitaries for the remaining 14 shire counties and therefore suggests an average of between two and three unitaries in each of those areas.One district chief executive commented: ‘Last month's announcement marks the death knell for unitary councils based on county footprints. The allocation of the implementation grant shows that the civil service is sensibly planning for many smaller unitaries to emerge from reorganisation and most of them will have populations well under 500k.'An MHCLG spokesperson said: ‘Decisions on the size of the reserve and how it will be allocated will be made once final decisions have been made on all remaining LGR areas.‘We will support councils to deliver LGR in a way that protects services and reflects the needs of communities.'Based on the ministerial decisions of 25 March, what are managing director of Imagine Public Services Nathan Elvery's predictions for the remaining areas? Focusing on the ‘clear patterns' from the recent announcement including the rejection of county council proposals, he pointed to district-led plans winning, ‘across the board', the average new unitary council with a population threshold of about 350,000, with cities being given expanded boundaries.He added: ‘Norwich, Ipswich and Southampton all grew. Boundary changes that would have been unthinkable two years ago are now routine, and the Government will impose its own modified proposals where it doesn't like what's on offer.'Elvery added: ‘The patterns are unmistakable and it would be surprising if the remaining decisions diverged sharply from the approach taken so far.'He predicted England will ‘likely have 55-65 new unitary authorities' when the dust settles. In terms of what this means for the other 14 areas whose consultations have closed, his forecast includes a high probability of two unitaries for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and a medium chance of four to five councils in Kent and Medway. For Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, he said a two-unitary outcome has a high probability and that this district-led proposed split ‘neatly separates the high-growth Greater Cambridge economy from the more rural and market-town Fenland/Peterborough area'.A Localis webinar last week looked at whether the Government will hold the line on reorganisation or if a rethink is possible. Director of the Association of Monitoring Officers Rachel McKoy is also interim advisor on governance for Basildon BC. She said capacity and funding for transition are barriers to hitting reorganisation deadlines, and there are ‘major worries about how this work is going to be delivered while ramping up for all these elections'.McKoy continued: ‘The capacity piece is a massive concern; how this is actually going to be done within the timeframe with the resources we currently have? We're losing so many people due to retirement, and so many people are leaving the sector. They said after these elections, that is it. They're not going to see LGR through because of all the anxieties and worries that come with that.'She added: ‘£900,000 per new authority to get going…that's a low amount of money. The Government has said that is to be ringfenced on transition. The integration piece is massive, and the disaggregation [of services] within it.‘But the prescription on it that they put, the caveats on how that is spent, mean you can't get the resources in. There will be a need for interims and that type of support to get everyone through the next steps, because the resources aren't there. They weren't there anyway, let alone in this new journey, this new landscape.'Will LGR get over the line ahead of the next General Election? Managing director of senior officers' organisation Solace Graeme McDonald's conclusion is ‘it does feel like we've got a space for reorganisation to happen between now and a General Election in 2029'.But he has a note of warning for both the sector and the centre. He believes that ‘locally, doing that transition is going to be really tough, and at a time when transformation of public services is so required, it's quite the distraction'.He added: ‘It's taking resources away from other transformation we could be doing, and it's taken us away from the Government's own agenda of focusing more on preventative activity and bringing decision making closer to the frontline, and closer to people.'

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Holding the LGR line?

By Ann McGauran | 09 April 2026

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