- Conference
- 2025 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 20 February 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes with concern the government’s proposals for wholesale local government reorganisation across England, particularly given that this was not in the recent Labour Party election manifesto or referred to anywhere prior to the Chancellor’s announcement in late 2024.
Conference believes that any attempt to lift local government from out of the crisis inflicted upon it by sustained reductions in funding by the previous Conservative governments will not be resolved by restructuring local government into larger unitary authorities.
While unitaries are potentially appropriate for larger urban areas, the government’s proposals fail to recognise the position in less densely populated two-tier council areas (covering over 37% of England’s population and 59% of its geographic area), which could damage local democracy, identity and autonomy.
Conference notes and regrets the cancellation of local council elections which are essential for people to have their say and give their verdict on the last decade of Tory rule.
Conference further believes that reorganisation is treasury-led, based on flawed assumptions from a single County Councils Network-commissioned report from PWC and that practical experience in those areas which have been through the unitarisation process have not evidenced discernible financial savings or improved service delivery.
Furthermore, such a wholesale reorganisation will risk undermining council services over several years, create a long period of unnecessary uncertainty for all local government workers in England whose authorities are being dissolved, which will likely be the vast majority, and fails to acknowledge the significant reductions in local government spending already delivered through cuts to local services and terms and conditions over recent years.
Conference believes that local government workers are on their knees after more than a decade of austerity and relentless restructuring, and notes that our members’ health and wellbeing must be of paramount importance. The significant additional workload the Government’s proposals represent, on top of ‘business as usual’, is unsustainable, damaging and likely to result in poor outcomes.
Conference therefore calls on the LG SGE to adopt a policy of full and restored funding for local government first, restructuring second. Conference further calls on the LG SGE to work with all appropriate bodies of the union, including its Labour Link, to demand that the government put on hold its hasty, ill-conceived rush to reorganisation until:
1) there has been adequate time for the findings of the fairer funding review to have been implemented;
2) they review the timetable to allow a more realistic timescale for efficient and effective local government structures to be considered and implemented than the current one;
3) they further consider waiting until after devolution has been implemented to avoid reorganisation causing problems for this reform, and
4) above all they allow for sufficient and meaningful consultation and negotiation with UNISON (and other unions recognised to represent local government workers) to have been undertaken before further changes proceed.
