What local leadership needs to thrive

The Government's Rewiring the State document is a welcome return to the clear intent set out in the original English devolution White Paper: stronger strategic authorities, greater local control over growth and public services and a move away from a highly centralised model of government.For Oxfordshire and West Berkshire, ministers have indicated a preference for three new unitary councils. This was not the outcome that the county council argued for and that debate continues on a political level. However, in common with other areas, the question confronting leadership teams is how we design councils capable of leading places in a more devolved system within the structures determined by the secretary of state.The new councils will need to be strong service delivery and place-shaping organisations focused on the services residents experience directly: children's services; adult social care; housing; local plan-making; development management; environmental services and neighbourhood functions.At the neighbourhood level, town and parish councils should be seen as part of that model of responsiveness and connection, helping new unitaries stay close to the identity, priorities and practical concerns of individual places.At the same time, many of the levers of sustainable growth will increasingly sit at strategic authority level.That changes the nature of local leadership. Success will depend not on what a council delivers itself, but on how effectively it can mobilise the wider resources available to a place.That means finding practical ways to share expertise, capacity and specialist skills across organisations and going further on alternative delivery models. It also means crowding in funding from across tiers of government, aligning developer contributions, strategic authority investment and national programmes and ultimately, creating the conditions for private finance to do more of the heavy lifting.Too much of the debate around reorganisation still assumes that councils succeed by accumulating functions, teams and budgets. The direction of travel set out by the Government points elsewhere.It means moving closer to Total Place 2.0, a place-based reimagining of public services with communities at its heart.The answer cannot be over-reliance on statutory bodies to deliver services on the current model that are increasingly unaffordable and unsustainable. Integration and efficiency, by themselves, are not sufficient.Seen through these lenses, organisational design becomes as much about interfaces as structures. We are not just creating councils with neat institutional boundaries and asking each to ‘do its thing'. We are designing organisations that must work within a wider system, where collaboration, influence and systems leadership are central to delivery.In my area, that has practical implications for planning, transport, skills and economic development, but this will apply across all councils. Local teams will still need to deliver services and represent their communities, but they will also need to act as intelligent clients, credible partners and strong advocates for their places within a wider governance landscape.Oxfordshire and West Berkshire residents care deeply about how their towns, villages and city neighbourhoods change. Decisions about growth, infrastructure and investment shape the character of places for generations and the new councils must be designed to ensure that decisions made at strategic level remain rooted in local priorities and local identity.The real test of reform will not be whether the machinery of local government has been rearranged. It will be whether communities feel they have more influence over the future of their places and whether growth becomes something they help to shape rather than something that simply happens to them.The biggest risk to the sector is that we spend the next few years redesigning organisations for a world that is already changing.Too much of the debate around reorganisation still assumes that councils succeed by accumulating functions, teams and budgets. The direction of travel set out by the Government points elsewhere.In a more devolved system, influence may matter more than control, partnerships more than ownership, and the ability to unlock investment and shape outcomes more than the ability to deliver everything directly. The councils that thrive will be those prepared to rethink what local leadership looks like in the decades ahead.Robin Rogers is director of economy and place at Oxfordshire CC

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What local leadership needs to thrive

By Robin Rogers | 27 August 2026

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