Keeping reorganisation on track: Preparing East and West Surrey for vesting day

It has been a busy few weeks for local government across the country, but here in Surrey, there has been an even more unusual angle, as we welcome new political administrations that have almost had a year to prepare ahead of vesting day.It is a unique situation, but as senior responsible officer (SRO) for implementing local government reorganisation in Surrey, it is another phase of the programme I am hoping will help us move forward effectively towards 1 April 2027 when East and West Surrey will be properly in place.We have 162 freshly-elected councillors, 90 for the West and 72 for the East and two new leaders who have just appointed their cabinet executive teams. There are also two interim heads of paid service, two interim section 151s and two interim monitoring officers.The workforce of the existing county council and 11 districts and boroughs will remain focused on their own sovereign councils, continuing to deliver services to our residents, while supporting the transition of those services to the two new councils.It is not a simple ‘lift and shift' exercise. It is a structured, risk-based process involving detailed data collection, validation and analysis. Bringing contract data into a single, consistent dataset allows us to identify gaps and to take informed decisions.That transition is dependent on our implementation programme. It continues to work across all councils, with senior officers leading different themes and workstreams, collaborative project teams putting together complex plans of disaggregation and aggregation of services and teams navigating different IT systems and making key decisions to enable the smoothest possible transition next April.One of the most important and complex areas of that work is our contracts and procurement theme, which has identified more than 20,000 live contracts across current councils in Surrey that will need to be transferred safely and lawfully.After a bit of recent commentary, it is important to state just how detailed and complex this work is.It is not a simple ‘lift and shift' exercise. It is a structured, risk-based process involving detailed data collection, validation and analysis. Bringing contract data into a single, consistent dataset allows us to identify gaps and to take informed decisions.While it is neither practical nor necessary to redesign every contract ahead of vesting, each will go through due diligence and be fully assessed. Our approach is deliberately prioritised and focused to ensure contracts remain fit for purpose, both at vesting and beyond.This is unchartered territory for staff and politicians alike and it is vital that we are clear on our roles and the task at hand.There has been great progress in building a positive and collaborative working culture across all council staff in Surrey and it is important we maintain and carry that forward into the new councils.That culture has allowed us to progress a huge amount of work in a short space of time and which has been presented and passed through both East and West inaugural council meetings.The new leaders and administrations are now keen to get into the detail and help shape the direction of travel as they get to grips with the task at hand.While the existing councils are still running services and making important day-to-day decisions, the new councils will need to focus on preparing for day one and beyond.A primary focus needs to be on budget-setting ahead of 2027-28, but they also need to work on agreeing structures of the new organisations, appointing permanent senior officers, setting up governance arrangements and new constitutions, and ultimately, agreeing how those councils will operate – how they feel, look and are ready to hit the ground running.As SRO, it is my job to work with those new shadow councils to support them in that endeavour.We will continue to do the work to help the new administrations make evidence-based decisions on disaggregation and aggregation, ultimately to deliver the best services for residents into the future.We will release resources and capacity where it is needed, through the right governance structures of our implementation programme and sovereign councils.We will continue to take staff with us through unchartered territory, staying focused and not fraying off into too many different directions.Continued service delivery for residents has to be our priority.With the work done already and the collaborative and constructive mindset we have had so far, I am confident we will stay on track to get to vesting day in a safe and legal state, ready to serve the residents of East and West Surrey with a seamless transition. Lots of work has been done, but there is still plenty more to do.With the new political dynamic adding more energy and ambition into the process, we must harness that constructively to help us stay on track and keep pace.Terence Herbert is chief executive at Surrey CC and senior responsible officer for Surrey's local government reorganisation (LGR) programme

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REORGANISATION

Keeping reorganisation on track: Preparing East and West Surrey for vesting day

By Terence Herbert | 03 June 2026

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