End Game For Local Councils
PAUL McLAUGHLIN
The Councils of Hastings Borough, Rother District and East Sussex County are set to be to be abolished. Taking their place, probably by 2028, will be a new Mayor and a Strategic Authority covering the whole of Sussex, armed with strong new powers over housing, planning, transport, energy, skills, and employment support. They will be backed up with integrated and consolidated funding.
That’s the proposed effect of the Government’s English Devolution White Paper published just before Christmas. It envisages the most radical shake-up of council structures in decades, with the current patchwork of district, borough, and county councils across the country replaced with new, larger, more centralised, local authorities.
The boundaries of these new unitary councils are still to be determined, but within the county of Sussex it is envisaged there will be three new councils, each serving a population of 500,000 or more, and each tasked with managing a broader range of council services.
Proposed Benefits
The Government argues that its reform proposals will reduce bureaucracy, improve service delivery, and create a more cohesive local governance structure to drive forward economic growth. For the coastal areas of Sussex, which face unique pressures from tourism, housing demand, and the threats posed by climate change, there is a particular need to deliver a more integrated governance model that allows for a coordinated response to tackling these issues.
By reducing the overall number of local authorities, the Government believes it can improve efficiency in the delivery of public services, saving the Treasury up to £2 billion each year. It also aims to strengthen the economic resilience of local areas. Centralising of key functions is seen as facilitating more strategic planning for major projects, such as new housing developments, sustainable transportation networks, and climate change adaptation initiatives.
Fading Into Oblivion?
Concerns and Criticisms
The proposals are facing opposition from several quarters. Critics fear that the abolition of smaller councils will inevitably lead to a weakening of local democracy. Borough and district councils, such as Hastings (HBC) and Rother (RDC), tend to have a more direct connection with their local communities than the much larger, but more distant and detached, county councils. The creation of new unitary councils, with fewer elected officials, could make it much harder for residents to influence decisions at a local level and to hold their leaders to account.
Alongside these fears are concerns about the erosion of local identity and that consolidating local authorities across Sussex would lead to a “one-size-fits-all” approach which fails to address the unique needs of different communities within the county. There is already some resentment within Hastings that the town has largely been ignored by East Sussex County Council (ESCC); many people fear this will only get worse if the plans are given the go-ahead.
Local councils have also voiced concerns about the potential disruption of essential services during the transition period. The process of merging councils could take 3-4 years to fully implement, and some believe the disruption could result in delays or a drop in service quality, especially in crucial areas like healthcare, social services, and public safety.
Next Steps
The Government is determined to roll out its reform plans across England over the coming years with the aim of having new councils in place by the end of this Parliament in 2029.
The respective Council Cabinets of East Sussex County, West Sussex County, and Brighton and Hove City Council all held emergency meetings on 9 January to discuss the plans. All pledged their support for a new Sussex Mayoral Strategic Authority. They also agreed to submit a joint expression of interest to be included in the priority group of areas for the first wave of council restructuring.
The Government will notify council leaders by the end of January as to whether they have been selected for the Devolution Priority Programme. If the plans are accepted, a consultation will be held to obtain residents’ views. This would be completed before the end of March. A ministerial decision is then expected by September to confirm whether to proceed.
Confirmation would trigger the postponement of the ESCC elections due to be held in May. Current legislation only allows for local elections to be postponed for up to one year, but the reality is there will be no more, whether to ESCC, to HBC (which has elections due in 2026) or to RDC (due in 2027). All sitting councillors are likely to stay in place until 2028.
The election of the future mayor of Sussex could, however, take place in May 2026 and a decision whether to move to a Mayoral Strategic Authority under the reorganised arrangements would follow, with elections to the new shadow local authorities pencilled in for 2027. The new unitary councils would then officially replace all existing councils in May 2028.
Reaction in Hastings
The proposed postponement of elections has united Green party council leader Julia Hilton with the local Labour MP for Hastings and Rye, Helena Dollimore. They signed a joint letter to the Local Government Minister to highlight their “serious concerns” about the plan. They said the current Conservative-led administration of ESCC, which has been in No Overall Control since 2023, was “unlikely to be the stable administration needed to deliver on ambitious plans for a new Mayoral Combined Authority as well as the related local government reorganisation”, and did not have a “mandate to push ahead in this way on behalf of East Sussex…[the] attempt to rush these changes through and delay key local elections risks undermining local democracy at the very time we need to restore trust in politics.”
At an HBC Cabinet meeting on 6 January Glenn Haffenden, the Green Deputy Leader and Housing and Community Wellbeing Portfolio Holder, expressed concern that the proposed new unitary councils would make it much harder for local residents to raise their concerns about housing conditions and about where to build new homes.
Paul Barnett, the Leader of the Hastings Independents, said the plans represented an existential threat to democratic representation at a local level. He urged his fellow councillors “not to raise a white flag to the white paper but to fight the proposals” which, he said, “were not right for the people of Hastings.”
This view was echoed by Labour Mayor Judy Rogers, who warned against accepting the plans for a Sussex unitary authority: “As things stand, it will be the first time since Elizabeth I granted the town its Royal Charter in 1582 that Hastings will not have had its own mayor and council.”
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This is the biggest reform of local government for 50 years and will profoundly affect all our lives, but it has been almost totally ignored by the mainstream media, both nationally and locally. So congratulations on writing such a well informed report.
I’m also very unhappy with the lack of a concerted campaign by our councillors. The Independents put out a notification about it on social media on 20th December, but it got very little traction and does not appear to have been followed up. The other parties decided not to bother telling the town until they came back from their Christmas holidays. Even then, it was only after several activist groups and individuals realized and started shouting that the council ‘leader’, and then one or two Labour councillors, decided to put out anything about it – and *then* the Green Party were out saying they were trying to save the election. Had it not been for the HIP front page, I doubt most of the town would even have known. HIP, please make sure the town is reminded about, and directed to, the consultation when it comes. We DO have a right to a say in this.