Does the public care about local government reorganisation?

Unlike most of the population, I dutifully completed my response to the consultation into local government reorganisation (LGR) in my neck of the woods last month. This was hardly an arduous exercise, though some of the questions had civil service-esque fingerprints all over them.For example, how was anyone else supposed to know whether the proposed councils would be able to ‘deliver their outcomes' at the right size to ‘withstand financial shocks' and even provide ‘high quality, sustainable services'? For that I would need a crystal ball – not to mention a guaranteed generous three-year funding settlement from vesting day.So as a resident, I could hardly describe the consultation process as rigorous, but to be fair, if it had been, even fewer people would bother to complete the questionnaire. The fact is, LGR is being conducted in a bubble in which the general public remains largely disengaged. While controversy rages like a bushfire through the pages of The MJ, the people whom LGR is all about are unconcerned.But apathy at consultation level does matter because while residents do have views, the problem is they often express them after it is too late. The classic objection is when rural areas find themselves part of an expanded nearby town administration and feel a loss of identity or fear the encroachment of suburbs. Then there is an attachment to historic counties or county boroughsAn Ipsos/LGiU survey last year found 63% of English adults were not following LGR at all. A consultation on proposals for Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton received 5,163 responses. The total population of the above areas is two million, so the response represented 0.25%. An online survey regarding LGR in Oxfordshire received 1,500 responses out of a total county population of 763,000.But does this really matter? The answer is both no and yes. The public is generally apathetic about local governance and that is its prerogative. After years of derisory election turnouts, elected police and crime commissioners are being scrapped from 2028.Years earlier, the then-Labour government tried to introduce English regional assemblies. These were dropped after a 2004 referendum in the North East, the area thought to be most in favour, overwhelmingly rejected the idea.But apathy at consultation level does matter because while residents do have views, the problem is they often express them after it is too late. The classic objection is when rural areas find themselves part of an expanded nearby town administration and feel a loss of identity or fear the encroachment of suburbs. Then there is an attachment to historic counties or county boroughsCommenting on the absorbing of the Middlesex CC into the Greater London Council in 1965, John Betjeman wrote: ‘Dear Middlesex, dear vanished country friend, your neighbour, London, killed you in the end.'Residents may object when the new council is not coterminous with health services or the waste tip is in another council area so they cannot use it. Or they simply do not like the name of their new council – often dreamed up to avoid upsetting anyone by being as bland as possible – or they just do not identify it as the place in which they live.In fact, identity is out the window with the current LGR. Starkly geographic terms seem to be the favoured names for the latest new unitaries with lots of North, South, East, West and Central in titles. ‘I live in North East Essex Council,' is unlikely to get the heart racing. It is as if the civil service is determined to make the new unitaries sound as functional as possible, a bit like George Orwell's ‘Airstrip One' in Nineteen Eighty Four.It could have been worse. In 1969 the Redcliffe-Maud Commission proposed scrapping the century-old structure of counties, county boroughs, boroughs and urban and rural district councils and replacing them with just 58 unitaries. Labour accepted the report but the plans were abandoned when the Conservatives won the 1970 election.Michael Burton is researching a biography of Lord Redcliffe-Maud

Title

REORGANISATION

Does the public care about local government reorganisation?

By Michael Burton | 20 April 2026

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