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Speaking to the impressive young leader of Conservative-led Harlow Council Cllr Dan Swords on a sweltering day, it turns out staff have been queuing for free ice-creams.The local government reorganisation (LGR) agenda has also been hotting up, including in Essex, with the Reform-led county council threatening judicial review over communities secretary Steve Reed's decision to support proposals for five unitary authorities to replace 15 councils by 2028.It has also emerged that Reed overruled government officials, who had recommended the county's three-unitary proposal, as it met all the criteria more strongly than the other proposals. It was also the only one assessed to be financially viable within five years. Essex is part of a growing wave of opposition to LGR. Hampshire CC has also launched a legal challenge against reorganisation and Portsmouth City Council confirmed plans last week to take the same step.Asked about the impact of LGR on the regeneration masterplan Building Harlow's Future, he says: ‘It will be devastating, and it's not about being an awkward council that doesn't really like what the Government's doing, as I tried to set out in the letter [to Reed].Meeting The MJ to discuss the vision for Harlow's transformation – a plan for the rebirth of the new town for a new generation – it is quickly apparent that Swords, who turned 26 last week, is beyond frustrated by what he believes is LGR's potential to stymie this bold programme.Harlow is set to be replaced by a West Essex unitary. Discussing the letter he has written to Reed calling for a ‘pause and full review' of LGR proposals, he is calm, but there's an underlying cold fury. He says there is a ‘lot of chatter' among the districts in Essex about whether they will join in with the county council's threat of legal action.He adds that while Harlow has ‘yet to make a final decision' about whether it will join Essex CC in taking on the Government, ‘there is certainly a case about joining with Essex's action, but on slightly different grounds'.‘Essex's scope is very, very broad, and I don't agree with some of the things they're saying. But fundamentally, there are clear flaws in the [LGR] decision-making process, and everything else.'Asked about the impact of LGR on the regeneration masterplan Building Harlow's Future, he says: ‘It will be devastating, and it's not about being an awkward council that doesn't really like what the Government's doing, as I tried to set out in the letter [to Reed].‘It's saying that if the objective of all of this [LGR] is to deliver growth, this is not the right way of doing it. But if you're hell-bent on it, the timetable and the process is for the birds.'He adds: ‘If you take what we're doing in Harlow – the fastest-growing place in the country, the complete rebuilding of our town centre and our neighbourhoods, all the things they [the Government] care about, massively improving service delivery, radically changing the way we deal with our own housing stock… Who would, in their right mind, suggest the best thing for the people we're trying to do that for is that we stop all of those things and divert our attention into reorganisation? There is no way we can have this big bang and that it is going to work.'In Harlow, Swords has received the kind of local electoral mandate that would make most administrations deliriously happy, with the Conservative Party in Harlow winning all 11 seats in May, in contrast to the losses suffered nationally.Swords sees this as a huge endorsement of what has been achieved so far. ‘The level of investment is extraordinary. We've done that with freezing council tax, because we have radically changed the way the council works.‘The level of investment is enormous. We've brought in a lot of private sector investment, both through joint venture, direct private sector schemes that we help them run, or private financing. We've either made an awful lot of efficiencies or massively increased our revenue to be able to borrow as a council in a prudent way to invest in things.'His view is that the whole sector ‘has sort of sleep-walked into LGR a bit, me included, and we should have been firmer at the start and said this is ludicrous'. He also believes it was harder to change course, ‘as you have a lot of people with vested interests'.‘You have hundreds of chief executives up and down the country who are staring down the barrel of hundreds of thousands of pounds in redundancy in two years' time. How easy is it for people to give objective advice about what's right for the council when they're in that position?'Regeneration is ‘absolutely hung on confidence, stability, clarity of vision, getting private sector investment, and bringing in partners', he concludes. ‘Unlocking things is totally hung on "are they a stable council, are they really clear on what they want to do, and is there longevity in this?" LGR blows all of that up.'

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REORGANISATION

Why reorganisation threatens Harlow's regeneration vision

By Ann McGauran | 01 July 2026

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