Local government reorganisation: ambition, fragmentation and the limits of judicial review

England is in the midst of what ministers describe as the most sweeping overhaul of local government in over half a century. 

Announced as part of the English Devolution White Paper in December 2024, local government reorganisation (LGR) involves replacing separate county and district councils with a single tier of unitary authorities.

This will end an arrangement whereby county councils handle matters such as transport, social care and education, while district councils manage housing, planning and waste collection. 

The ambition is grand, but the execution is proving rather less tidy for Whitehall’s decision-makers, creating potential risks of judicial reviews.

What the government is trying to achieve

The policy rationale behind LGR rests on three core arguments: delivering efficiency savings and improving public services; enhancing accountability by making it clearer to residents who is responsible for local decisions; and helping to ease workforce pressures and cut costs associated with elections and councillors.

Crucially, LGR is conceived as the necessary architectural precondition for broader devolution.

The wholesale restructuring of district and county councils is not an end in itself – it is the plinth upon which elected mayors and combined authorities are to be built. 

In February 2025, Local Government Secretary Steve Reed formally invited proposals from all councils in the 21 two-tier areas, with a guiding principle that new councils should aim to have a population of at least 500,000, with the first new unitaries planned for 2027 and 2028.

A proliferation of competing proposals

What the government received was not a series of neatly choreographed submissions. Analysis by the Local Government Chronicle found more than 50 different proposals were submitted, rising to 70 when the six areas on the devolution priority programme which submitted their bids earlier are counted.

The picture across individual areas illustrates just how contested the process is. In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, there are four opposing plans, with the county, city unitary and five districts unable to agree on a two or three unitary model.

In Derbyshire, the Reform-led county council is proposing a single council covering the county and Derby City Council – a body that would have a population of 1.1 million, rivalling Birmingham City Council for its title of largest council in Europe. This is one of five proposals.

In Hertfordshire, the one thing all 10 districts and the county council have agreed on is that 1.2 million residents should not be served by a single county unitary authority but beyond that, leaders are torn between two to four future councils. In Kent and Medway, the 14 council leaders ultimately sent five business cases to the government, despite earlier narrowing down to two leading options.

Government makes its first decisions

Following announcements in relation to Surrey in October 2025 – which were dealt with separately due to the need for LGR to occur to unlock discussions about a new combined county authority – the first tranche of decisions (or the rest of the priority programme arrived on 25 March this year. Mr Reed announced there will be five unitary councils in Greater Essex, as well as in Hampshire and the Solent, while Suffolk and Norfolk will have three apiece. 

In each case, Mr Reed backed the option creating the highest number of new councils, arguably making district councils the clear winners and county councils the clear losers. The decisions also represent a marked departure from original policy parameters: only three of the 15 new councils would meet the original 500,000-population threshold.

Similarly, what was meant to be an exception – parishes being moved across current council boundaries – now appears to be the norm, affecting nine of the 15 new councils.

Decisions about East and West Sussex were deferred. Mr Reed cited concerns that proposals for West Sussex risked diluting rural identity and options keeping Brighton and Hove, currently part of East Sussex, within its current footprint would limit economic growth and housebuilding potential.

Legal risks include potential for judicial reviews

Judicial reviews can be brought against any public body’s decision. Therefore, the government’s decisions on LGR are susceptible to judicial review as long as claims are brought by anyone with “standing” via a sufficient interest in the claim. 

As any affected council or residents in these areas would have standing, a challenge being brought is a distinct possibility, particularly considering political implications of decisions. 

Essex County Council has already stated it is considering a legal challenge to the government's decision to reorganise the county into five unitary authorities. The local authority had proposed a three-unitary model and questioned whether the chosen model meets the guidelines laid down by ministers at the start of the process. 

Crucially, however, a judicial review isn’t able to challenge the merits of a decision except where it’s so irrational that no rational decision maker would have reached it. Otherwise, the only available grounds for a judicial review are that the decision was unlawful or procedurally flawed.

In the first set of decisions on LGR, the Secretary of State’s decisions appear to have been taken lawfully within the scope of the decision-making specified in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, meaning it would be very difficult to argue these are irrational. Accordingly, a challenge on the basis of illegality seems unlikely to be successful.

This leaves the option of a procedural challenge. The parts of the decision-making process within the public domain via letters sent to council leaders appear to be procedurally sound, with the outcome of a consultation taken into account.

Even the expectation of each unitary comprising at least 500,000 people was never framed as formal guidance. When government considered draft proposals informally, its follow-up communications made it clear this number represented a “guiding principle, not a target”. The issue of size is unlikely to be sufficient grounds for a successful claim given the government didn’t set a legitimate expectation.

However, it’s possible there are details within individual, behind-closed-doors engagements between the government and local authorities that would allow a claim to be made.

There’s also strong potential for significant disruption to an already tight timetable if a claim is brought. Even if a claim is ultimately unsuccessful, the bar for a case to be heard by a court is relatively low, particularly in high-profile circumstances with heavy political involvement. The delaying effect of successful claims would be even greater by undoing decisions and halting progress until a resolution is made.

Legal skirmishing has also extended to elections. A legal challenge by Reform UK forced the government to abandon plans to postpone 30 local elections, with Mr Reed confirming all elections on 7 May 2026 will proceed. 

Broader challenges and what the future holds for LGR

Beyond the immediate threat of judicial review, the government faces deeper structural challenges. 

Unitarisation creates larger, more remote units of administration, potentially making local government less responsive to communities. The political dynamics have grown increasingly fractious, with Reform UK gaining control of several county councils and positioning itself as an opponent of the process. 

Critics also question the financial viability of new councils with significantly fewer than 500,000 residents, and raise concerns about splitting vital services such as adult social care and children's services.

The May elections feature more than two dozen councils directly affected by the March 2026 announcements. Many of these may see a change of political control, raising the prospect that newly elected administrations, potentially hostile to LGR, will inherit the task of implementing it.

The government will undertake public consultations before finalising new unitary footprints, with elections expected in May 2027 and go-live in April 2028. A statutory consultation launched on 5 February 2026 covered 14 further areas – including Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Kent and Lancashire – which remain the most contentious.

For legal practitioners, the programme presents a rich and expanding landscape of work: process compliance, the scope of the secretary of state's modification powers under the 2007 Act, and the legality of sub-district boundary changes are all live issues. 

The government's ambition is not in doubt. Whether its execution can withstand legal scrutiny, democratic contest and the sheer complexity of reorganising local government across an entire country – simultaneously, and at pace – remains the defining question of this Parliament.