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The spring sunshine may be shining on everyone, but it seems to be shining most brightly on district councils.The Government's decision to embrace their demand for smaller, more locally-focused, unitaries in the Devolution Priority Programme (DPP) areas – rather the counties' call for mega councils – has left lower tier authorities full of the joys of the season.Anticipating the need for a rebrand ahead of the march towards unitarisation, the District Councils' Network (DCN) emerged from its conference last month as the Local Councils Network (LCN).Richard Wright, leader of North Kesteven DC and the network's chair, insists the move was more than a name change.‘We've done this for the right reasons, it's not a cosmetic rebrand,' he says. ‘It's about being a vibrant voice that is now available to more authorities than when we were the DCN.'‘We would have faith that the Government has thought about that and it'll be interesting to see what any authority thinks it can judicially review. We were working to guidelines, we weren't working to legislation.'While Wright is clear that his organisation has a ‘mature relationship' with counties' representative body, the County Councils' Network (CCN), there is little doubt cross-tier tensions are brewing in DPP areas, with the threat of county legal challenges now looming. But Wright is unfazed.‘At the end of the day, the Government has made its decision.'But some have raised concerns that counties may now fail to fully engage with the transition to unitarisation, potentially complicating or slowing the pace of achieving ‘safe and legal' by vesting day. Wright still doesn't flinch.‘We would have faith that the Government has thought about that and it'll be interesting to see what any authority thinks it can judicially review. We were working to guidelines, we weren't working to legislation.'‘There might be disappointment in some circles, like counties, but the reality is, you won't see local authorities leaving people at risk.‘The most important part of disaggregation is that we don't leave anybody, any vulnerable people, at risk, which we won't do, because that's not what local government does.‘I have faith that we won't have a single county council that thinks it could make its point by not allowing "safe and legal" to be a starting point for any new unitarisation.'Understandably, Wright exudes the air of someone leading an organisation in the ascendency.Despite insisting his relationship with CCN is sound, and that the two networks have never been at ‘loggerheads' over reorganisation, he nonetheless is sceptical about his counterpart's future.‘It's for the CCN now to see where they go. I mean, the county councils will not exist, so it would seem illogical that you'd have a County Councils Network.‘The reality is, we grasped the nettle and saw that district councils won't exist and so we asked how we could best support the sector?'‘So, what we've done is we've made it so that we are fit and proper for the future.'As he begins to chair a rebranded network, with a scope that potentially stretches to encompass pretty much any English council, what changes can members expect?‘We're making sure that we've got the right advising staff in place,' Wright explains. ‘We'll either be working with the professional bodies in the government area and/or we'll be taking our own advice as well to make sure we can give that advocacy to the local authorities that we're looking for across the whole suite of policies.'He is also clear there are no potential conflicts of interest between the LCN and the Local Government Association (LGA).‘We've made it clear that we remain a special interest group of the LGA. We've looked at advocating on behalf of issues that have come up, whereas the LGA is very much more policy driven, covering everything that seems to come out from government.‘So, we will continue with what we're doing, and we'll work on what our membership wants us to work on, and the LGA will remain the parent body.'But what now is the ‘special interest' for LCN?‘I would say the vast majority of the special interests we already represent are still there. The reality is all we're taking on is adult services, children services, SEND [special educational needs and disabilities] and highways.‘We're taking on very few extra services. They're just perceived as important because they've been with counties before. Most of what we represent as policy will be the same.‘The key issues that we've been advocating for over the last year, as they evolve, will still be ones that we'll be taking forward, but we'll also have a mind as to what's happening with the SEND reforms and what's happening with children's services.‘There are going to be the extra ones that we'll be looking at, but we get that from our membership. We don't sit above our members. Our members are the LCN.'

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LOCAL COUNCILS NETWORK

New name, same game

By Cllr Richard Wright | 09 April 2026

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