Council professionals involved in Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) are concerned about the impact of the programme on service delivery and the long-term viability of new authorities, according to polling conducted by public sector AI specialist ICS.AI.
The poll gathered responses from more than 60 council professionals that are going through local government reorganisation. When asked about the biggest risks facing their council during reorganisation, 33 percent identified disruption to service delivery during the transition as their primary concern, making it the most commonly cited risk. This was followed by failure to achieve expected cost savings (17 percent), technology and systems integration challenges (16 percent), and reduced funding for local services (12 percent).
The findings also revealed uncertainty around the readiness of new authorities for Vesting Day. More than one in four respondents (26 percent) said they were either ‘not very confident’ or ‘not at all confident’ that their council would be viable on Vesting Day. Just 12 percent described themselves as very confident.
Looking beyond Day One
The results come as councils across England undertake the largest structural reform of local government in a generation. While previous reorganisations have successfully delivered councils that were safe and legal on Day One, many have subsequently faced significant financial challenges.
ICS.AI believes one of the root causes is the highly manual nature of traditional LGR programmes, where staff, assets, contracts, systems and financial information are often gathered and reconciled through spreadsheets, documents and email chains. Research from previous programmes suggests that as a large majority of programme capacity can be consumed by administrative activity, leaving limited time for transformation and financial planning.
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Martin Neale, CEO and founder of ICS.AI, said: “These findings reflect what we are hearing from councils across the country. The challenge isn’t simply getting to Vesting Day. It’s ensuring new authorities are financially viable and able to deliver high-quality services from Day One and beyond.
“Too much of the current LGR process is spent gathering and reconciling information rather than planning the future organisation. By using AI to automate the creation of organisational baselines and provide a single source of truth for programme teams, councils can spend less time on administration and more time designing services, identifying efficiencies and building sustainable authorities.”
AI offered as a solution
ICS.AI is pitching its SMART: LGR Command Workbench, an AI-enabled PMO and Transformation operating environment as a solution.
Built with F3 Consultancy, the workbench forms part of the wider SMART: Day One Accelerator Programme. The firm said it helps councils establish “dynamic real time organisational baselines, financial and disaggregation scenario modelling and Council blueprints in weeks rather than months. It also automatically generates transformation opportunities and areas of difference, harmonisation or challenge across all the Councils taking out the cost and time of manual analysis.”
Said Neale: “Safe and legal should be the starting point, not the end goal. The real measure of success will be whether councils emerge from reorganisation with the foundations in place to thrive financially and operationally for years to come.”
