Local Government Reform

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Dr Murrison. I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) for securing this important debate.

It was also a pleasure to hear from everybody’s honourable friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It is not the first time he has come here and said, “I know that Northern Ireland is not covered by this, Minister, but perhaps our experience can be instructive,” but boy was he right today. There are two key questions, and he highlighted the importance of the first: “Why do this at all?” With all the attention it needs, it will take away from other priorities, at a time, in particular, when we are about to have huge changes to the system for special educational needs and disability. There are also the costs involved. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) said, it is a question that literally no one was asking, and the answer was not in the Labour manifesto.

Even if we accept that there can be reorganisation, we must ask: “On what basis?” In East Hampshire, this plan will break up communities, take away local identities and put people into new artifices. It will take the people of Horndean, Clanfield and Rowlands Castle and put them into a new super-council area centred on Portsmouth, with the rest of East Hampshire going to a vast area called the Mid Hampshire unitary authority, all for an uncertain and quite likely negative return. In plain English, that means that local people will end up paying more.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned, the Government set out clear criteria for reorganisation, which included a focus on sustainability of high-quality services and a minimum scale of 500,000—that number did not come out of nowhere; it came from a serious piece of work by PricewaterhouseCoopers about the minimum scale needed to deliver services—and, crucially, that the building blocks of the new organisation should be existing districts and boroughs. It was on that basis that local leaders engaged in the process. They were not clamouring for it—leaders in Hampshire were not knocking down the door of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government saying, “Please reorganise us!”—but they engaged in good faith in the process.

Nick Adams-King, the leader of Hampshire county council, set out a summary of conditions for change, including that any new structure must be sustainable financially, operationally and democratically. He said:

“It must be capable of delivering high-quality services”

and

“resilient enough to manage demand in adult social care, children’s services and SEND.”

Crucially, he said, it must have “a balanced tax base” and “reflect real communities”, and

“not create winners and losers by stripping growth, infrastructure and income from area to shore up another.”

I do not think I could put it any better than that, but that is not what has happened. There were three different options in Hampshire, with different rationales for them. In theory, the fewer the unitary councils, the bigger the cost savings, but Hampshire county council and my district council in East Hampshire preferred the middle option, which was to have four authorities—a balance between delivering savings and reducing risk.

There has been a big disagreement about the analysis of those different options by different people looking at them. Crucially, we do not know the Government’s own analysis of the different options for carving up Hampshire and why they chose the one they did. We do know that, of the different local authorities, two on the mainland are smaller than the 500,000 minimum. Of course, the Isle of Wight is smaller again, although there are unique circumstances there.

We know that there are substantial costs. Although there will be some economies of scale in things moving from district level to unitary level, there will also be diseconomies of scale in things moving from county level to unitary level, and those are the things with the biggest cost pressures in our system. People worry what this will mean for housing. All the local plan work was done on the basis of the existing district councils; now, that will not work. People worry about the loss of local knowledge. Parish councils are concerned about the implications for them.

Crucially, there is the question of identity and cohesion. I already mentioned Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield being split off into Portsmouth, and this is also a concern, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East said, for parts of the New Forest, for Test Valley and for Winchester. The Minister has spoken of how identities grow over time. These are entities that have been in place for at least 50 years, around which other organisations have organised themselves. Charities and other public sector organisations organise themselves around district and borough boundaries, and these changes will inconvenience them.

If the Government insist on proceeding, the process will need time and sober assessment, and for local authorities to come together to find consensus on the way forward. This is not a trivial question; it is about some of the most important things in our lives, such as the care for our ageing mums and dads and for the children with the highest needs and vulnerabilities. It is a long-term decision. This will not have an effect for three or five years; it will have an effect for decades.

We need to start by knowing on what basis the Government made their decision. We cannot very easily argue with it if we do not know what it is. The letter from the 16 council leaders mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) makes a very reasonable ask: that we should know the Department’s own analysis and feasibility assessment. I say to the Minister simply: please, show us your workings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Forster]

I can do, but obviously I am going to pass over to the Minister in a bit.

If there are to be such monumental changes to the way we operate and run our society, we need to consult local people. Repeatedly, through this entire process, local views have been disregarded. Back in April, hundreds of people staged a protest against plans that would split the New Forest area into two mega-councils, as has already been referred to. More than 13,000 unhappy residents signed a petition calling for New Forest district council to take legal advice and pursue a judicial review. Local government reorganisation should be driven by councils and local areas, not dictated to by London. We are told that LGR is about efficiency and a fresh start, but the reality on the ground looks like absolute chaos. If anything, it is a setback.

We need look no further than Woking. Surrey county council was planning to make Arnold Road and Eve Road in Maybury safer and nicer, but the scheme has been kicked into the long grass and the council will not engage with me or the local residents it consulted about the plans. It has been palmed off on West Surrey council, which is being created next year. That is shocking. The situation is a prime example of how local government plans are grinding to a halt. Essential infrastructure is on pause as Ministers and civil servants reshuffle the system. LGR is causing delays and frustrating the lives of local people, who should not have to watch their community services decline while councils try to guess the future. That is all happening with no leadership or direction from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The issues are rife elsewhere too. Shropshire council spends 80% of its budget on social care. It is a prime example of the financial pressure facing local services. Alongside underfunding, it has also had its funding cut. Care for the elderly is such a huge burden, because 25% of its population is over 65, and the lack of transport and other local services makes the provision of social care even harder.

The Government’s LGR is making it more difficult for areas to build homes, as councils are having to concentrate on LGR rather than the national housing crisis. My local authority, Wokingham borough council, has just started to draft a new local plan where local people get to decide where we build the homes we need. But next year it will be abolished. Labour’s manifesto pledged to build 1.5 million homes. Now it is making it more difficult for local areas to build and risk reneging on that manifesto promise.

Alongside the local plan, since coming to power in Woking, the Liberal Democrats have been trying to fix the mess left by others. Last year I helped secure a £500 million debt write-off from Woking’s debt that we inherited from the Conservatives.

[Damian Hinds]

Half a billion pounds?