24/07/2026
The book from these eminent experts will show you the real detriments of LGR - Local Government Reorganisation - and how it will diminish local representation and lead to a massive deterioration and fragmentation of local services.
Real places should be the foundation of local government, writes an emeritus professor at De Montfort University.
The relentless journey towards larger and larger units of local government is seen as some sort of technocratic fix to what ails our system of governance, but it is a journey that has meant English local government has progressively lost its link to the places and communities which matter to local people.
Colin Copus, emeritus professor of local politics at De Montfort University, and visiting professor at Ghent University
Community identity, geographical loyalties and local patriotism, all of which have a role to play in the shape of local government across most of the globe, have been discarded as antiquated and romantic in the search for the optimum size of local government.
The search is for a size that will guarantee efficiency, effectiveness, cost reduction and service excellence. Yet despite having some of the largest units of local government across the globe, we still haven’t reached that goal.
Myopic view of local government
In our new book, the Strange Demise of the Local in Local Government, Steve Leach and I ask the question of policymakers: how big will you go before you realise the error of the assumptions behind ‘bigger is better’ and how do you reverse the process?
When it comes to the size of local government, the centre prefers policy-based evidence to evidence-based policy
Our book shows the mountain of research evidence that indicates local government size is not the sole determinant of efficiency or effectiveness or a guarantee of it. When it comes to the size of local government in England the centre prefers policy-based evidence to evidence-based policy.
The drive towards bigger and bigger local government also displays a myopic and misplaced view of local government as merely a service delivery agency of the centre. Yet the role of local government as an electorally legitimised body of local self-government and as a vehicle through which local people and communities express their values and priorities and shape their future is over-looked, if not deliberately ignored in the search for the philosopher’s stone of optimum size.
Better for whom?
Why then does the centre hang onto the idea that bigger is better? When you ask the question ‘better for whom’, the answer becomes both simple but chilling for localists everywhere. Fewer councils and fewer pesky councillors to oversee, negotiate with, control and coerce makes the centre’s job so much easier.
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The solution is simple and we already have it – tiered local government
So, as we show in the book, it is not citizens, communities and localities that benefit from the creation of huge unitary councils – far from it. It is the centre’s life that becomes easier. Hang on to your hats: we’re in for a bumpy ride towards the 58 unitary councils across England proposed by the 1968 Redcliffe-Maud report, as the logic of the journey we’re on has that as the final destination.
We spend much time in local government discussing ‘place-making’ yet, as our book demonstrates, places already exist – we have thousands of them, and they mean things to people and communities – they just aren’t seen as sufficient for the basis of local government. So, we have to spend countless hours and resources shaping, or rather re-shaping, what already exists.
Casual disregard of community
The solution is simple and we already have it – tiered local government. So, we offer in the book a detailed way of making real places the foundation of local government and developing a structure that not only places communities at the heart of local government but also fits in with the development of combined authorities. Only local government founded on real places can keep entities such as combined authorities meaningful.
We offer in our book evidence and a set of arguments to be used by those faced with the threat of local government reorganisation and the creation of a huge unitary council. We set out the detrimental effect on communities, citizens and local government itself of our casual disregard of community and locality as having any relevance to the size and shape of local government and provide an alternative future for local government based on re-localising the system.
So, if you’re looking for reading material that is a rip-roaring romp through local government structure and size while sunning yourself on holiday, it is well worth getting a copy of the book before you leave because they’ll be sold out at the airport bookshops.
The Strange Demise of the Local in Local Government; Bigger is not Better, by Steve Leach and Colin Copus, is published by Palgrave, 2023.
Colin Copus, emeritus professor, De Montfort University; visiting professor, Ghent University
