‘Embarrassing admission’: councillors react to pause on local government shake-up

“They’ve saved themselves the embarrassment of having to admit that they got it badly wrong”: Councillors have reacted to the Government pausing its local government shake-up.

Yesterday, Secretary of State for Local Government Angela Rayner announced that the Government will review its Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) plans.

LGR, which was initially proposed under Keir Starmer’s Government, would abolish the two-tier system of local government, where county and district councils share services.

This would be replaced with larger unitary authorities providing all services to populations of around 500,000 people, in a bid to streamline local government.

The proposals could have seen Portsmouth City Council merged with borough councils in Gosport, Fareham and Havant, creating a proposed ‘South East Hampshire’ council.

Locally, LGR has been highly controversial, with Portsmouth City Council’s Liberal Democrat administration launching a Judicial Review (JR) in June, legally challenging the Government’s decision-making.

The proposals have also been heavily criticised by Conservative and Reform UK members, with one of the main concerns being the potential for the new authority to start with a £67m deficit after inheriting part of Hampshire County Council’s budget gap.

Councillor Steve Pitt, Liberal Democrat leader of Portsmouth City Council, said yesterday’s announcement “vindicates our decision to challenge their plans”.

“What we know is that six judicial reviews have been filed, we also know that the government were constantly asking for the deadline to respond to them to be extended and we were refusing that request.

“What seems to have happened is that they ran out of time, they realised that they had no record of the decision making process – the Secretary of State appears to have made decisions without properly documenting the reasoning.”

He said throughout the review the Government might not be able to produce an “rational evidence base” for why it made certain decisions “and therefore they might have to start again”.

“This is literally a case of the government set themselves a process and criteria and they didn’t follow them and a JR would have flushed that out potentially in open court.

“They’ve saved themselves the embarrassment of having to admit that they got it badly wrong.”

In closing, he said the Government had not informed the council how long the review would take.

The deputy leader of the Labour group, Cllr Graham Heaney, also speculated that the legal challenges were behind the review, suggesting that the JR “may well have highlighted” the lack of a “proper decision process”.

He added that he was concerned with “the speed of the process, it was going to be a real challenge doing it in the time required” and making sure there was an assessment for the financial impact of LGR.

A Labour group spokesperson welcomed the decision, adding that “Portsmouth deserves a process that puts the interests of our city and its residents first and this is an opportunity to get it right.

“But this pause is no free pass for the Liberal Democrats to stop working on the big issues facing our city. Portsmouth has some of the worst recycling rates in the country, some of the lowest primary and secondary school attainment in the UK and spiralling council debt of more than £700m – the highest in Hampshire.

“The Liberal Democrats need to knuckle down, stop playing political games and start tackling these issues. Residents expect them to come up with solutions and this pause doesn’t give them an excuse not to.”

Cllr Emily Strudwick, leader of the Reform UK Group, said the Government had “once again jumped into a situation, without a mandate, that they’ve now U-Turned on and cost the taxpayer millions of pounds for a delayed project.

“LGR is a disaster for Portsmouth and we’ve been saying this since day one.”She said the Government “decided they knew better” rather than listening to local concerns.

“They attempted to cancel elections, delay the mayoral election, do boundary reviews and then cancelled them and now we see them force LGR on us and then delay. This government is inept and incapable of running this country.

“LGR will likely return as it’s the project of Angela Rayner but I hope it’s delayed long enough to see Reform UK take control of the country so that we can scrap it once and for all.”

Cllr Spencer Gardner, Conservative member for Drayton and Farlington, who has been critical of LGR from the outset, said: “This review is an embarrassing admission from Labour ministers”.

He said councils across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight had spent months “diverting officer time and public resources” as well as “more than half a million pounds” on consultants.

“Many of us warned from the beginning that this was a rushed, top-down exercise driven by political ideology rather than local need. The Government has now been forced into an embarrassing U-turn.

“I hope this does not mean devolution is kicked into the long grass. We still want to crack on with an elected mayor for the region because that’s where the extra powers and funding are.”

Angela Rayner announced yesterday that the Government is “determined more than ever to devolve power closer to the people we represent”.

She added that the review of LGR was done “in light of legal advice” and that she wants to “satisfy myself firstly that the right process is in place, that it is robust, and of course complies with the law” and that the LGR meets the “priorities of a new administration and the new Prime Minister and any additional considerations”.

LGR is separate from devolution, which aims to create a county-wide authority with devolved powers and resources led by a Mayor – currently being progressed for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.