Council leaders have urged the Government to accelerate local government reorganisation (LGR), warning that delays are eating into the time needed to deliver meaningful reform.
In a letter to the FT, seven council leaders said there was ‘a hunger’ among local authorities to ‘break out of old boundaries’ and take decisions on housing, infrastructure and growth that ‘benefit the wider urban area.’
The letter was signed by the leaders of Oxford, Exeter, Gloucester, Lincoln, Peterborough, Cambridge city councils, as well as the leader of Reading Borough Council.
It warned that the 2028 ‘vesting day’, when new unitary councils are due to come into existence, was approaching faster than the pace of Government decision-making might suggest.
The leaders called on ministers to accelerate the remaining LGR decisions, arguing that further delay would only pile pressure onto the implementation phase.
‘Delay does not create space for better preparation; it simply compresses the time available for the implementation that will determine whether reform succeeds or falls short of its ambitions,’ the letter said.
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