How to build a community around Local Government Reorganisation

Last week, Norfolk councils brought together over 260 officers from across county and district councils for a simple premise: to build the community before you build the structure.

Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but only if you start before you think you need to – a lesson brought to life by live panel speakers from Dorset and West Northamptonshire. The event was chaired by LGIU’s very own Jonathan Carr-West as part of our strategic advisor role to Norfolk Chief Executives. This article recaps five key lessons on building a community around LGR and bringing people along on the journey of change.

1. Start collaboration now

A key mantra when preparing for LGR was simply: start before now. Pace beats perfection, especially when the onset of programme governance means the window for building genuine cross-organisational trust is shorter than it appears. Anna Earnshaw, the first Chief Executive of West Northamptonshire Council, described how grief at the decision hits people at different points, and colleagues will be looking to their leaders for reassurance long before structures are confirmed. Making the strong point that you can’t backfill that trust retroactively.

2. Treat people as people, not as an input for the programme

Georgia Turner, who led communications through LGR in Dorset, offered a warning that landed with particular force: not everyone sees themselves as part of the programme. Some staff will see LGR as an exciting chance to redesign services. Many may see it as a nuisance to what they are already doing. Some will see it as a reason to exit. If you treat the whole workforce as programme-passionate, you will lose the middle ground.

She emphasised that the answer is not a myriad of one-way communication. Instead, it is genuine two-way feedback loops to allow staff to surface concerns and feel heard. In the Northamptonshire example, they deployed 200 change champions to test whether information was being understood and whether anxieties were being addressed.

More on the importance of organisational culture and communication during LGR is available here.

3. Invest in relationships before you need them

The relationships that matter most in a reorganisation are between leaders and organisations, and between councils and their communities; they cannot be manufactured under pressure. In Dorset, protecting civic identity was a potential deal-breaker for members. LGR succeeded in part because leaders listened well enough to understand that, and built trust around it, rather than continuing through it.

4. Be honest about what you don’t know

One of the most repeated themes of the day was transparency under uncertainty. Tony McArdle urged senior officers in the room to be honest about what they are doing now and what they are leaving until later. In practice, this requires discipline about whether something is being left because it is right to, or merely because it is easy to. He explains that staff can tolerate uncertainty, but what erodes confidence is the sense that leaders are managing optics rather than sharing the reality.

5. Community is the infrastructure

LGR is not a process that incentivises collaboration. A competitive system of business case preparation means that, while many may councils work collectively to prepare ahead of a government decision, collaboration to maximise LGR effectiveness is rare.

What Norfolk is attempting in this approach of bringing everyone together across organisations is to work relationally in an outcomes-agnostic way and to intentionally build an LGR community from the ground up.

This is not something LGIU has seen across other DPP areas where we work to the same extent. In her reflection of West Northamptonshire’s experience, Anna Earnshaw outlined four points of tension: the behaviour of members protecting legacy, the trauma of disaggregation, the complexity of financial history, and the persistence of legacy issues. All of which serve as a useful reminder that success is not assured.

Ahead of the government decision, it was exciting to be in the room filled with growing momentum and a mindset that Norfolk has the biggest opportunity in over 50 years. The outcomes are still uncertain. But what is certain is that it will be a rollercoaster driven by the people who show up, listen, and choose to build something stronger together before the structures require them to.