Ministers have confirmed that Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) will resume across five English areas, just over a month after legal advice and council challenges forced Whitehall to suspend the programme.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) announced it is proceeding with restructuring in East Sussex and Brighton and Hove, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. However, 15 other areas remain under review, with decisions regarding the remaining councils expected early next year.
Under the revised roadmap, local elections will proceed on existing boundaries in May 2027, followed by shadow authority elections in May 2028, ahead of a formal rollout in 2029. To help offset implementation costs, the government is allocating £450,000 per proposed unitary council from a £63 million capacity fund. While several regional leaders have welcomed this, others have spent recent weeks demanding greater financial backing or threatening legal challenges over mounting expenses.
Minister for Local Government Jim McMahon OBE told Parliament that “the decisions that we take now will be the building blocks for how this country is governed for generations to come.”
In Brighton and Hove, Council Leader Bella Sankey welcomed the two-unitary blueprint, stating: “Bringing our communities together reflects how people live.” She added that it would “give residents a greater say over the services they already use.”
Worcestershire’s seven council leaders offered a similarly receptive response, confirming that the plan to establish North and South unitary authorities by April 2029 remains “effectively unchanged” from July, leaving them “in a strong position to respond to the Government’s decision.”
In Gloucestershire, leaders welcomed the clarity but cautioned that “delay has consequences” for councils already navigating acute financial strain. They urged Whitehall to cover the reorganisation costs authorities are incurring and reaffirmed that they “will continue to lobby for a devolution deal for our county.”
Opposition remains sharpest in Oxfordshire, where the government has proposed three unitary authorities. Council Leader Tim Bearder plans to use the mandatory three-week consultation window to press for a single unitary model instead, warning that his council “will consider legal action alongside that, but we’re not yet committed to that.”
