Draft Local Government (Structural and Boundary Changes) (Control of Disposals etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026

Sadik Al-Hassan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 General Committees

[Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I support this technical but important correction. Section 27’s anti-avoidance provisions exist to prevent authorities facing dissolution from disposing of assets to avoid scrutiny, but their value depends on the reference date staying current.

My constituency of North Somerset is a useful illustration of why this matters in the long term. It has been a unitary authority since 1996 and, even 30 years on, legacy questions around assets, contracts and historical boundary decisions can resurface. Updating the baseline in section 27 from December 2006 to 31 March 2025 is sensible housekeeping, which ensures that the consent regime keeps pace with present-day restructuring, rather than the baseline being tied to the 2008-09 wave of unitarisation. It is the kind of provision that must be kept under continual review so that it does not drift out of date in the same way a second time.