About the LGR Initiative

About This Series

Personal thoughts and reflections as we begin to launch the LGR Series, exploring the intricacies of the most far reaching restructuring of English local government in a generation.

What is the LGR Initiative?

Local Government Reorganisation: Decisions, Power and Place examines a programme that will reshape not only how planning authorities operate, but how the wider local government system functions around them. Driven by the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million new homes, reorganisation will influence governance, capacity, accountability and delivery across the whole development cycle.

What Areas Does LGR Affect?

These reforms cut across multiple critical areas:

• Governance: How place shaping priorities are set and decisions are made
• Finance: Budget allocation and resource management across merged authorities
• Digital systems: IT infrastructure and data integration challenges
• Service integration: How statutory services interact and capacity is deployed
• Political leadership: Democratic oversight and accountability structures

In practice, LGR will help determine how quickly, consistently and transparently councils can make decisions, and how confidently partners can invest behind them.

What Are the Potential Benefits?

There is substantial potential here. Done well, reorganisation could create:

• Clearer lines of accountability
• More coherent decision pathways
• Stronger governance controls
• More resilient operating models
• Faster, more predictable planning through improved consistency and reduced duplication

Our Approach

Our intent in publishing this Series is firmly supportive. We want to help authorities, developers and practitioners understand the issues early, so they can capitalise on the opportunity rather than be hindered by it. We will focus on what is practical, what is measurable, and what can be acted on within real world political and organisational constraints.

Lessons from Experience

Recent history shows, however, how easily the opposite can occur. Dorset and Northumberland provide instructive case studies where governance disruption, legacy systems, political instability and uneven organisational capacity contributed to slower decisions, reduced transparency and increased risk across the development ecosystem. Those experiences offer lessons on what happens when reorganisation collides with fragile governance arrangements, or insufficient preparation.

Surrey as a Test Case

To keep the analysis grounded, the Series uses Surrey as a primary test case, examining how reorganisation may reconfigure planning committees, officer delegations, governance controls, digital infrastructure and political accountability. From this, we draw out what planners, developers, officers, councillors and programme leaders need to understand now, before formal transition decisions set the direction of travel.

The Core Question

Across the Series we return to a core question. Will LGR create a simpler, faster and more effective environment for planning and delivery, or will new structures, inherited systems and political flux introduce fresh complexity?

Our Objective

Our objective is to equip the sector to make the former a reality. Thank you to everyone who has already contributed, and to those who will take part as the Series develops. I hope you find it useful, insightful and pragmatic, and I welcome suggestions for topics, case studies and contributors.

Rowan Cole

LGR Initiative

About the Editor

Rowan Cole is Engagement Director at COALFACE, where he leads research and analysis on local government governance, planning performance, and democratic accountability. His work focuses on how institutional structures and political conditions shape development outcomes across England.

The LGR Initiative draws on COALFACE's Council Scanner™ methodology, which examines planning committee behaviour, officer delegation patterns, decision-making consistency, and governance effectiveness across all English planning authorities.

Author ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-1064-9037