District Councils’ Network (DCN) SIG - annual report to LGA Board 2025

• Lead Member: Cllr Sam Chapman-Allen
• Lead Officer: James Hood
• Email:  [email protected]
• Address: 18 Smith Square, London
• Telephone:
• Website:  District Councils' Network | Closer to communities

• 164 District Councils
• Five Unitary Councils

The full list is here: About Us | District Councils' Network

The District Councils’ Network (DCN) is a cross-party network of 169 district and unitary councils. We are a special interest group of the Local Government Association, providing a single voice for all district services.

Our member councils in England deliver a wide range of essential local to over 21 million people – 37 per cent of England’s population. They cover 53 per cent of the country by area. DCN councils are home to 36 per cent of England’s businesses and 30 per cent of national Gross Domestic Product.

The DCN delivers value for our members by:

• supporting our councils and being advocates for the work they do and the challenges they face;
• facilitating collaboration, networking and access to information;
• influencing central government and the outside world to deliver the right national policy and funding framework for our councils to deliver the best possible services to residents;
• producing evidence-based research on the key issues facing our councils and wider local government.

DCN’s support to our membership aligns closely to that offered by the LGA to broader local government.

The LGA’s themes of improving and supporting local government are complemented by our Staff Development Programme which seeks to enhance future senior capability. Our Chief Executive Group offers a forum for the discussion of how our member councils can improve their performance and solve specific problems facing the sector – with guidance or suggestions disseminated by chief executives to colleagues in their regions.

Our lobbying and advocacy emphasises the fact that DCN seeks to collaborate with partners in local and central government. While we specifically promote the work of our member councils, this is in a spirit of cooperation with all other authorities.

We seek to strengthen our member councils’ voices and status within a context of seeking to strengthen local government’s voice and status overall. 

Over the past year we have enhanced our parliamentary work, lobbying and external communications. We also have prioritised support for our member councils as they work to shape the future of local government and local services in their areas as part of Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) and ahead of wider regional devolution.

Support on Local Government Reorganisation

As the Government embarks on the most significant change to the local government landscape of the past fifty years, we continue to support our member at this time of transition and ensure the distinctive voice of our communities is heard by central government and within the local government sector.

We have continued our national advocacy to influence the Government’s policy on Local Government Reorganisation (LGR).

DCN has also stepped up our support offer for political and officer leaders, as well as our wider staff development offer. This includes a programme of webinars and events to give practical advice to our councils on how to implement LGR effectively and how to set up new councils and services to succeed. It has drawn on the experience of people and places that have been through LGR in recent years. 

We have commissioned external research to set out the characteristics of successful adult and children’s services and will shortly be providing a toolkit for members to determine the best model for delivering them in their local circumstances.

Our robust lobbying on funding has made clear to the Government the difficulties all our councils face and won some important victories including:

• Greater flexibility on the 500,000 minimum population threshold for new unitary councils.
• Big increases to planning application fees and draft legislation that will give planning authorities full flexibility to set fees locally.
• Increased funding to support councils affected by Internal Drainage Board levies.
• Government commitment to multi-year finance settlements.
• Government commitment to look at greater flexibilities for local authorities without Housing Revenue Accounts (HRA) to build more social homes. 

We have undertaken influential research to inform Government thinking, including:

• our Affordable Housing Blueprint, containing a range of tangible recommendations to increase the supply of affordable housing. This has prompted MHCLG to begin to look into one of our main recommendations: to increase the HRA threshold.
• our report on ‘Growth, Reform and Trust’ with Inner Circle Consulting, setting out how we can respond to the challenges and opportunities of LGR.

We have stepped up our parliamentary advocacy

We have continued to grow our influence in Parliament. This is giving DCN member councils and the issues that matter to us much greater prominence with MPs, Peers, select committees and ministers. We have given evidence to more select committee inquiries than ever before and delivered training to new MPs.

We have stepped up our communications and media work

DCN has secured extensive media coverage to put issues including devolution, LGR, housing, planning and homelessness in the national spotlight. Our concerns about the 500,000 minimum population size for new unitaries have featured prominently in all national broadsheet newspapers, TV news bulletins and on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme and Times Radio.

We have expanded our support for council officers and aspiring councillors

We are running our biggest ever Staff Development Programme. This will help to support and develop the talented officers and ensure a pipeline of excellent local government leaders of the future. 

We have sought to enhance diversity in our political representation through our ‘130 years of a woman’s right to stand’ event, celebrating the first ever women councillors, our brilliant councillors today, and encouraging more people from underrepresented groups to consider standing for elected office.

Events

• We held our Annual Conference in March 2025, welcoming over 300 attendees.
• We held our annual parliamentary reception in November 2024 to celebrate 50 years of district councils, putting on a parliamentary exhibition to showcase all the innovation in local government.
• We ran a series of high-quality webinars and roundtables for our members throughout the year.