Major plans to merge Essex councils together into large authorities will create a “period of uncertainty and stress for staff, contractors and service users” Uttlesford’s council chief executive has said. Council boss Peter Holt also says the process, which could take around four years, is “just putting off some of the harder and more unsettling decisions that need to be taken.”
Mr Holt has prepared a report ahead of the extraordinary council meeting of the North Essex council on January 8. It comes after the Government announced a huge change to the structure of councils, which is expected to see all councils abolished and replaced with new combined authorities in Essex, as well as other parts of the country.
It is yet to be revealed exactly how it will affect Essex. Under the current system for councils in Essex, there is a two-tier system, with 12 district councils, two unitary councils and one county council. Powers, responsibilities and services are split up between district and county councils, while unitary councils run all services independently from the county council. In Essex, the district councils are Basildon, Braintree, Brentwood, Castle Point, Chelmsford, Colchester, Epping Forest, Harlow, Maldon, Rochford, Tendring, and Uttlesford. The unitary authorities are Thurrock and Southend, and the county council is Essex County Council.
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The report by the council boss suggests that the start date, vesting day, for a new set of unitaries in Essex and close-down date for the current 15 councils to be abolished would likely be either April 2027 or April 2028, with a shadow authority elected about a year earlier, likely May 2026 or May 2027, respectively.
It reads: “Although a vesting day of April 2028 may on the face of it seem to afford a welcome degree of more time to merge councils, in many respects, it is just putting off some of the harder and more unsettling decisions that need to be taken, and thus extending the period of uncertainty and stress for staff, contractors and service users. This is because the really hard decisions are taken by the newly-elected members of the shadow authority, which is generally only elected in the year before vesting day. An April 2028 vesting day therefore means elections to the shadow authority likely in May 2027, so those difficult decisions being taken from May 2027, instead of from May 2026 shadow elections if ‘Vesting Day’ were April 2027.
“Clearly, concerns about the loss of closeness to residents is likely to be more acute the larger each new unitary authority is. Councillors may also feel that different alignments of areas would make Uttlesford’s rural character more or less likely to be subsumed into more densely populated neighbouring areas.
“Various changes presaged in the white paper would require extensive public consultation in due course. There is no opportunity for meaningful public consultation between the late December 2024 publication of the White Paper and the 10th January 2025 deadline for applications to Government to cancel the May 2025 County Council elections. The potential reforms promoted within the White Paper would lead to substantial changes affecting all council staff, including potentially a change of employer, likely new terms and conditions in a new unitary council, and some redundancies, especially amongst senior staff.”