Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the (a) reasons and (b) evidential basis are for the threshold of a population of 300,000 being chosen as a requirement for unitary authorities.

It is the statutory guidance, issued by the Secretary of State on 27 March 2018 under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, which states that a proposal for unitary local government should seek to achieve unitary authorities with populations as a minimum substantially in excess of 300,000.

The Secretary of State has issued this guidance, including on population size, having regard to past reorganisations, the Northamptonshire County Council Best Value Inspection Report of March 2018, and research, including that from the County Councils Network in 2016 into lessons from previous unitarisations which found that the scale of a unitary council was key, with larger authorities able to deliver economies of scale while smaller unitary councils were more likely to be less resilient, putting key services at potential risk.