Local Government Reorganisation

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this quite significant Statement. The Government have suddenly paused the reorganisation plans they started for local government. This is astounding. Proposals to merge councils in Norfolk, Suffolk, Hampshire, and Essex have been withdrawn. The 14 areas which formed the third tranche of the programme have also been put on hold. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and West Sussex, which were awaiting the Government’s decision, now face further uncertainty for residents, councillors and council officers.

We are told that this new review follows updated legal advice but is also to align the plans for local government with new government priorities. The only area unaffected is Surrey, where the two new unitary authorities have already been established. This has come too late for them.

It was only in June that we were told that this Government

“remain fully committed to the timetable already set out”,—[Official Report, Commons, 16/7/26; col. 141WS.]

and that their local government reorganisation programme was

“a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that councils genuinely represent the communities they serve today and stand the test of time”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/7/26; col. 139WS.]

Time has hardly passed, and the programme is paused.

Let us not forget that local elections were postponed. Now, elections in May 2027 will go ahead on existing council boundaries. So much time, not to mention money, was spent drawing together proposals, conducting and responding to consultations nationally and locally, with staffing, governance, finance and service delivery about to be restructured—without, by the way, any guarantee that this would end up saving taxpayers any money or improving services for local people. Are we now being told that it may have all been for nothing because the Government did not think through the legal implications or because the new Prime Minister simply does not fancy it?

What is the estimated total cost of this review, both to national government and to the authorities affected? Do the people making those decisions have any idea how damaging the uncertainty and inconsistency is to many councils, including to staff recruitment and staff morale? Councils are losing large numbers of staff who want certainty on their future, and, for the same reason, cannot recruit replacements.

Your Lordships’ House spent eight days in Committee and two days on Report on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. The Minister said at Second Reading that the Bill would

“drive the biggest transfer of power out of Whitehall to our regions and communities in a generation”.—[Official Report, 8/12/25; col. 30.]

However, we now have the rewiring of state White Paper to look forward to, which will focus on devolution and local government. Can the Minister clarify, if this new Bill is to deliver devolution, was the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act not devolution at all? As we said at the time, it was not community empowerment. It shifted power away from the local to the regional and to Whitehall—from locally elected councillors to mayors, and from democracy routed in local identities to new managerial, technocratic boundaries. Will this new Bill reverse that direction of travel?

We are hearing the same platitudes from this Government to disguise their lack of long-term vision. Can the Minister tell us exactly what the priorities of the new Prime Minister are, and how they will differ? What certainty can she give to local councils receiving this news? I look forward to her response.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Across England, there will be thousands of councillors and council officers who have worked for months, sometimes years, to deliver an effective solution to the Government’s top-down reorganisation diktat. They will have devoted scarce resources in both funding and precious time. Today, they will be despairing. With the stroke of a ministerial pen, all their careful planning has been consigned to the waste bin.

The principle of devolution is the right one. Unfortunately, the Government have conflated devolution with local government reorganisation, and that has resulted in this sorry mess. There are any number of questions that the Minister must answer, given that, in July, she gave an assurance in this Chamber that a decision on the final reorganisation plans for the remaining councils would be made in October.

I am confident that there will be many specific questions about individual councils, so I will restrict my questions to general principles. First, given that the Government’s decision has been made following legal advice, can the Minister publish that advice and provide a summary for us in her response? Will she tell the House when those councils with agreed plans were informed? Some councils had already developed financial planning on the basis of agreed reorganisation. What support will the Government provide for those councils now facing severe financial pressures?

Today’s announcement has left councils and their residents in limbo. The Statement makes it clear that elections for districts will take place next year. That indicates a longer timeframe for reorganisation than a speedy review. Asking people to become councillors for a non-specific period is difficult. Equally, encouraging voter enthusiasm will be more challenging. What are they voting for? How long will it last? Local democracy has been the real loser in all this, with elections cancelled and democratic terms of office extended on a whim.

The process by which the Government determined the parameters of this reorganisation defied the importance and relevance of local communities. For example, new councils were told they had to have a population of at least 300,000, with a maximum of around 500,000—although, of course, one of the new Surrey councils has a population of 700,000. That was stated despite many existing unitary metropolitan councils being smaller than that. For instance, Calderdale, in my own west Yorkshire, has a population of just over 200,000. Many councils in the Manchester mayoral authority have a population of around 300,000 or fewer. That was one reason why communities lost out in this top-down reorganisation.

This is a thorough and embarrassing dog’s breakfast for the Government. It has all stemmed from the flawed notion that the financial crisis facing county councils could be resolved by changing the seats around the table and going for reorganisation, while ignoring the historic community ties around which many councils were created. The Government have much to do to put the “local” back into local government. I look forward to a thorough explanation from the Minister.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords—