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Ministers' recent decision to pause and review the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) process has plunged councils into a state of uncertainty. Despite the Government's order to ‘cease all implementation activity', downing tools is not an option, with leaders and officers needing to deal with the immediate issues this decision brings, plus prepare for a future that is not yet clear.Immediate issuesCease in this context does not mean stopping everything. Equally, continuing at pace is not an option. Leaders and officers will need to take more of a ‘holding' approach to protect existing progress, mitigate new risk, and position their councils for all potential eventualities. This starts with urgently defining what activities amount to implementation work, including any costs already committed or likely to be incurred that may continue during the pause. The government's order expressly states that partners must also cease work, so councils must identify any transitional activity being undertaken by third parties and consider asking them to stop work. As the wording in the order is clear, it is not guaranteed that any implementation costs that would otherwise be avoidable will be covered by the Government's LGR funding. All strategic decisions taken to date will also need to be reviewed. Leaders will have the difficult job here of balancing the future needs of their existing council whilst also being prepared for all possible outcomes of the review (see below). For example, we know some councils have been reviewing their estates to make them ready for transition, yet they will need to reassess plans to dispose of buildings, including those which have a small window to serve a break notice. Future concerns Two distinct questions will be considered as part of the review:1. Was the process for making the decisions concerning which proposals to choose or reject legally sound, according to public law principles?2. Do the structures effectively support the Government's devolution goals, as laid out in the Rewiring the State document?Local leaders will rightly be wondering why these questions are being asked now rather than at the start of this process, given the costs – both financial and political – and the consequences of one or both of those questions being answered in the negative. Despite that, leaders must now plan for every eventuality. These could include: · A quick review, which finds no changes are needed and councils should proceed to April 2028 transition· A longer review, deciding no changes are needed and councils should proceed to an April 2028 transition, leaving less time to achieve that.· The review finds legal issues with the decision-making process requiring new proposals and/or a refreshed ministerial review of existing/new proposals.· The review finds that the LGR regime does not support the Government's devolution goals, and so is pushed back for a longer period or scrapped entirely. Such scenarios are wide-ranging and require a strategic roadmap to deal with them. For example, if there is a quick review with no change in vesting dates, how will that be resourced? What will it mean if the review requires new proposals or another review of the existing ones with potentially different outcomes? If the review decides to scrap the reorganisation process, how can leaders pick up the pieces, for example, repairing relationships that may have been broken, ensuring local needs can be resourced? Leading through uncertainty Another significant challenge for council leadership is how to support staff through yet more uncertainty about their own future and the future of the constituents they serve. Effective leaders will contain and interpret what is happening to reduce anxiety and understandable performance dips. In practice, this means speaking to all employees promptly about the Government's announcement, what it means, and acknowledging the potential worries of staff. Leaders should communicate with their people more often than they think is necessary. The Government must undertake this review rapidly and robustly to give local leadership much needed clarity. Until then, those same leaders face the tough task of holding together organisations that only recently were told they were going to be broken apart. Christopher Kerr is head of environmental, social and governance standards at Davitt Jones Bould

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LGR pause and review: what councils need to know

By Christopher Kerr | 18 September 2026

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