One of the last acts of the Starmer Government was to announce one of the biggest shake-ups in local government for a generation.
The local government reorganisation (LGR) announcement covers around 20 million people living in two-tier areas.
The Government’s handling of LGR has been chaotic and disrespectful to the communities it affects.
“Communities will lose the local representation on which they depend”
MPs and councillors have been given no meaningful detail on what these deals look like, and no time for proper scrutiny.
At the time of writing, we are still waiting for decisions for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and West Sussex. We may not hear about these areas until the autumn.
Many authorities, especially the rural ones, are being left to flounder in dire financial straits, or forced into artificial regional structures that make little geographic or democratic sense, while money continues to flow to metro mayors.
This is not devolution. It is a two-tier settlement that we believe rewards urban Labour heartlands and punishes the rest.
These new mega-authorities will not bring government closer to people; they will push it further away.
Communities will lose the local representation on which they depend, and accountability will be buried under another layer of remote bureaucracy.
Many of these councils are already at breaking point and forcing rushed reorganisation onto authorities already struggling to balance their books is recklessness.