The Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) has predicted that local government reorganisation will become “a colossal white elephant – a huge drain on time, resources and goodwill.”
LGIU chief exec Jonathan Carr-West has also criticised the halt in the process- announced by secretary of state Angela Rayner yesterday (September 7) – as “riding roughshod over 1000s of hours of work.”
Kent was due to abolish all 14 of its councils and replace them with four large unitary authorities with shadow elections due in May 2027.
But Angela Rayner said yesterday that following updated and privileged legal advice, ministers will review plans for Local Government Reorganisation – calling a halt to plans in 14 areas including Kent and the withdrawal of decisions for decisions on Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
The announcement pauses the changes which were due to take effect from 2028, despite some 18 months of work and resources from councils trying to meet government deadlines for the overhaul.
Jonathan Carr-West said: “What began as the most ambitious change to local government in a generation now looks in danger of becoming a colossal white elephant – a huge drain on time, resources and goodwill.
“Those councils undergoing local government reorganisation have been trying to implement a massively complex project, under intense pressure and to very challenging timescales. LGIU’s concern is not the merit or otherwise of the LGR decisions – many others have made well-argued cases both for and against the many proposals that were submitted.
“Our overriding concern is that local government leaders, staff and councillors have strained every sinew to meet the deadlines set by MHCLG. (The) announcement – whatever the reasons behind it – rides roughshod over 1000s of hours of work.
“If the Prime Minister is serious about his ambitions to rewire the state, then lessons must be learned from this debacle and learned fast. The proposed rewiring transformation is potentially a much larger undertaking than LGR, involving many more sectors and institutions.
“Its success will rely on collaboration and trust and the very local institutions that this announcement impacts most. All of which have been dealt a severe blow.
“The Prime Minister needs to bring councils with him – as we have said time and again, local government is vital to his aspirations. The Autumn White Paper will need to do a lot of heavy lifting to begin to rebuild trust across the sector and belief in a shared vision for the future of regional and local government.”
Responding to the announcement yesterday, Thanet council leader Rick Everitt said: “This is very disappointing news. It means that Kent will fall further behind other parts of England in terms of having modern local government with powers devolved to a more local level. It also creates an extended period of uncertainty for residents, council staff and councillors.
“Next year’s elections would have shaped the future of East Kent until 2032. Now no one can say how long the councils elected in them will last. That makes it very difficult to plan.
“The present structure, in which responsibilities are split between district and county, is confusing for residents and inefficient in terms of decision making.
“East Kent needs a unitary council and the whole county needs devolution from Westminster. The government had the right idea in bringing reorganisation forward, but the way it has been handled centrally is a mess and I cannot defend that.”
Thanet Conservative group leader Cllr George Kup said: “I am deeply dismayed by (the) decision to pause Local Government Reorganisation in Kent and Medway, after more than a year of proposals, consultation and preparation which ended in July with the Government deciding that Thanet, Canterbury and Dover would form a new East Kent authority.
“Less than two months later, that decision is under review, leaving officers in limbo and residents across Thanet, Canterbury, Dover and the wider Kent area facing yet more uncertainty over the future of their local government. I have already raised serious questions about the financial resilience of the proposed East Kent authority and the cost of transition, and those questions remain unanswered.
“If there are legal or fundamental problems with this process then of course they must be addressed, but those questions should have been answered long before councils were told a decision had been made and instructed to start delivering it.
“There is a bitter irony in all of this, because devolution is supposed to take power out of Whitehall and put it closer to the communities affected by these decisions. Instead, Whitehall has set the process, chosen the structure, told councils to get on with it and then pulled the whole thing back for another review. For a Government that promised to end the “Whitehall knows best” approach, this is an extraordinary way to demonstrate it.”
Thanet Green Party leader Tricia Austin said she and her party were also “shocked by the shambles the Government is making of local government reorganisation, and angry at the huge waste of time and money involved.”
She added: “This was a policy that did not appear in Labour’s manifesto, and which was imposed with very limited consultation. It was cheerfully assumed that council officers could prepare for this massive shakeup at the same time as doing their day jobs with no adverse effect on local services, and that councillors who had signed up to serve until 2027 would be delighted to hang on until 2028.
“It’s now embarrassingly clear the Government had no idea of the scale of the task, and little respect for the many thousands of staff & Councillors who’ve been hard at work implementing their arbitrary decision.
“We can see the attraction of simplifying a complex system, but as a party we believe decisions should be taken at the level closest to those affected, and this appeared to deliver the opposite – huge new authorities and significant loss of local representation.”
Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran said the decision to pause was ‘absolutely huge’ adding: “We have been working for almost 18 months on this on the government’s instruction. It has cost taxpayers around £1million so far and it’s taken up so much council time.
“And what now? Kent is left hanging, staff have yet more uncertainty over their jobs. You literally could not make up this level of incompetence from the government.”
She said Reform councils preparing to launch Judicial Review action over the local government reorganisation triggered the decision to halt the process, adding that it had been “a monumental waste of public money and officer and councillor time.”
Local elections in May 2027 are now expected to go ahead on existing council boundaries, giving parties and candidates just eight months to prepare.
Of course it’s a white elephant it’s a Labour folly they enjoy wasting tax payers money.
Oh no. Labour have only 8 months left before local elections will smash their hold on Thanet. Good
If I know anything about local government, predicting anything is a lost cause, and the LGiU should know better.I find the “pause” baffling. Why on earth decide on various options for reorganisation, if you haven’t taken detailed legal advice and made changes accordingly.
Dealing with the MHCLG is frustrating at the best of times, but this time they have really excelled themselves in incompetence and opaque explanations.What is ” privileged legal advice”? Didn’t they have that before they started on this track?
I don’t agree that all is lost, as much of the work will be useful when finally the MHCLG gets its train back on the tracks.
As for staying as we are, can anyone really believe that things are perfect at the moment?
I mean who in their right mind would invent something as utterly useless as Thanet District Council? As for KCC in its 137 year life has it ever been forward thinking and supportive towards East Kent, and the other areas in Kent that are deprived? What policies have they produced that has done anything to tackle the challenges of deprivation? None is the answer.
If Labour loses control of TDC it will be a blessing in disguise,and not very well disguised at that.
Those parties who think they have the magic wand or silver bullet to turn things around, I wish you well, but I fear the worst.It hasn’t worked out that way at KCC and with TDC it will be even more difficult.
George have you forgotten the Conservatives ran TDC for many years before the present Labour lot, were they any better? I think not!
I could give you evidence, chapter and verse, and solid reasons based on fact and logical reasoning as to why following through to a unitary authority is the worst idea ever. Sometimes you have to let the children get burned, they will be unelectable for two decades if they force this through, when people see rapidly the collapse of there organisation and services locally. For one, it needs a 10 year phase over in small increments if it even stands half a chance, not one term.
Do me a favour? TEN years what are you thinking about?
The Redcliffe Maud Commission went into great detail and proposed 2 unitaries East and West, but the government changed and as a sop to rural interests, the Heath government came up with districts and the trouble started then, because the districts tried to extinguish the various town identities, or at least that is what TDC tried to do.Did anybody vote for districts? No. Was there a consultation? Minimal, and all the towns were against it. Look what happened at Sandwich, they put the bridge fund money into a civic trust to stop DDC, getting their hands on it, and wasn’t there a row about that. TDC wrecked and tried to flog off every asset the towns accumulated, and that is why Dover,Folkestone,Ramsgate,Westgate, and many others formed Town councils. Canterbury is only now screaming about its city status, because it is afraid of what it did to all the towns in its district.
If you come up with bull about there being good reasons not to have unitaries, I can show you many mire where unitaries work fine. I mean Kent has one.
In 10 years half of the districts and KCC will have gone bust anyway.
You really must look outside of the bubble that is Kent.Large parts of the country has Unitaries,devolution, Mayors, expanding bus networks, and an aspiration to do better. The status quo stinks, and everyone can smell the rotting fish, except those who think they might lose out in some small way. If KCC wanted to stay alive it could have transformed the economy of East Jent rather than let it rot for so many years.
I tell you this if services are not integrated they will collapse anyway, so let’s stop the procrastination and get on with it.
I really think it is time we stopped listening to the reactionaries who are afraid of change, and start to embrace change instead.
These services you are afraid of losing, is that the tatty potholed roads, or bins that are not emptied, weeds in the street, litter not collected, a failing social service system, disappearing bus services,an education system that works for a minority,and not for the poorest,etc etc?
Is this what we have to defend? 10 years zi should Coco. By then AI will have killed us all anyway, and we will have deserved it, if we are that stupid.
This cannot be allowed to happen, all very eloquently worded but misguided and wrong. You need competition in the market place constantly to ensure best value, best service and contractors remain on their toes, not 5, 10, 15 year plus contractors handed out to large companies that cannot supply the services with efficacy they have bid for and been awarded, cutting out smaller more agile committed contractors. Look at the rail, water and other companies as example, and constant cancellation of term contracts were they go from one large contractor to another failing constantly as the management changes at the very top, but medium management lower management and workers do not as they get transferred over, policies remain the same, the same issues reoccur, this must not happen, throw it out as a waste, a better solution is to share information of good contractors, small independent ones, resource the councils correctly, get rid of the dead weight including some MPs.
Steve this is a service not a market place.I think one need only look at water, energy, transport,or indeed anything that Serco, Capita,G4S, any of them has done to public trust in our institutions.Your arguments might have had recognition 30 years ago, but experience has told us otherwise. These are services and are natural monopolies which require public control.Even Adam Smith would agree as he hated monopolies.
It’s time to move on and do what everyone else has been doing for years, you are fighting against the tide of events.
Staying put is no longer an option, especially for KCC, as SEND and Social care are undermining its finances day by day.We need only look at bus services a d potholes to see where the contract culture fails. One thing I learnt 50 years ago, was to contract out those things that were finite and measurable like resurfacing roads, and having an in house team to do service items, like fixing potholes, small lining jobs, fixing signs, cutting grass. An in-house team can be redeployed according to the seasons or the tasks ahead, without extensive contract terms.That in a small way is what’s needed, not more Serco or Capita cock ups.
You have to ask, what is the point of government at Westminster, with all this devoltion, less MPS, less, influence, less gravy train. RESIGN.
This is the most divisive act, in what should be a united kingdom, more so than reform and tommy robinson. Stop devolution of councils.
I’m waiting on. “I could give you evidence, chapter and verse, and solid reasons based on fact and logical reasoning as to why following through to a unitary authority is the worst idea ever”.
To be honest I have no idea if the change will lead to good or bad outcomes but where we’re at now is comically bad. However, I’m an optimist, I fully believe we can make it worse.
This is due to mismanagement, unitary authority gives you mismanagement on a bigger scale