Title

The pause in local government reorganisation (LGR) will understandably create mixed feelings across the sector.Councils have invested considerable time, energy and capacity preparing proposals, examining services and considering what new organisations might look like. For colleagues directly involved, there will now be uncertainty about what happens next.But before we let ourselves get too gloomy about it, I would like us to pause and ask how much of the reform we have been preparing for requires a reorganisation?LGR can change boundaries, governance and organisational structures. It can create opportunities to consolidate services and address some of the fragmentation between authorities. Yet changing the shape of an institution does not automatically change how that institution works.We could create larger councils and carry many of our existing operating models, processes, hierarchies, technologies and service boundaries into them. We would have reorganised local government without necessarily reforming the local state.Reform for me begins somewhere else. It begins with understanding people, place and demand.Across local government, we see residents whose lives do not fit our organisational structures. A household experiencing falling income may encounter benefits, housing, debt support, schools, health services and social care.Each service may perform its own function well while the resident carries the responsibility for navigating the system between them.Fragmentation also costs money. Repeated contact, duplicated assessments, hand-overs, delayed decisions and problems escalating while people wait all consume public resources. If we want financially sustainable councils, we need to understand those flows of demand and the conditions generating them.This is where prevention becomes part of the operating model. We need to understand where difficulties become visible, where earlier intervention is possible and whether spending a pound somewhere today can prevent considerably greater public expenditure elsewhere tomorrow.The same thinking should apply to our organisations themselves. We employ talented people who can spend considerable amounts of their working lives finding information, seeking approvals, reconciling systems, transferring cases and navigating organisational boundaries. Technology can help, including automation and AI, although technology applied to a poorly-designed process can leave us doing the wrong things faster.I think the opportunity is bigger than digitising existing local government. We can redesign it. I describe this as building a living council: an organisation capable of understanding its environment, connecting its capabilities, learning from what happens and adapting its response.LGR may return and where it proceeds it could create useful opportunities. If it does, we should use it to support genuine reform instead of treating structural change as the reform itself. For councils outside LGR and those whose plans are now paused, there is still a substantial reform agenda available to us. We do not need to wait for another White Paper, reorganisation or permission from the centre to begin.That means creating a shared understanding of people and place, designing services around resident journeys, building prevention into financial decisions and giving colleagues closer to the work the appropriate authority to act. It also means treating data, digital, AI, finance, commissioning, workforce development and service design as capabilities that can be deployed across the organisation instead of repeatedly rebuilding them within separate services.None of this requires a new council boundary. Much of the work undertaken for LGR can therefore still have value. Councils have mapped services, examined costs, reviewed systems, considered workforce structures and developed stronger relationships with neighbouring authorities. We should preserve that knowledge and ask which parts can now improve the councils we already run.There is a wider point about devolution. If we genuinely want to operate as devolved organisations, we should not wait for permission to reform ourselves. Devolution cannot only be something we ask for from Whitehall. It should also shape how we lead locally, taking responsibility for the powers we already have and using them with confidence.The financial pressures facing local government make this more urgent. Demand across housing, care, family support and household finances can interact and accelerate.Continuing to manage each pressure through separate service structures while resources become more constrained will eventually reach its limits. We need councils capable of seeing those connections earlier and responding as a system.LGR may return and where it proceeds it could create useful opportunities. If it does, we should use it to support genuine reform instead of treating structural change as the reform itself. For councils outside LGR and those whose plans are now paused, there is still a substantial reform agenda available to us. We do not need to wait for another White Paper, reorganisation or permission from the centre to begin.If we really want to act like devolved organisations, we should behave like them. We already have considerable powers, talented people and technology that previous generations of local government could barely have imagined. We know many of the weaknesses in our existing operating models and we know where residents experience the consequences.What we now need is some courage, some imagination and a team that can make it happen.Jens Gemmel von Döllinger is a public sector reform and systems thinking practitioner. He is currently interim director of transformation and efficiency at Hammersmith & Fulham LBC

Title

REORGANISATION

No need for local government reorganisation

By Jens Gemmel von Döllinger | 24 September 2026

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING