Learning the lessons for adult social care from local government reorganisation

Local government in England is currently going through a process which will result in the largest reorganisation since 1974.The areas impacted are shown below, however, clearly several areas and councils have gone through similar reorganisation in the recent past. The purpose of this document is to summarise the lessons learnt that have been drawn to together in numerous reports and publication, which are referenced at the end of this document, but focus with a particular adult social care (ASC) lens.

The scope covers the documented experience of those areas and the unitary councils that emerged. It is important to note that the purpose of this report is to draw our lessons that will be applicable to those currently going through reorganisation rather than specific issues to local areas. The intention of this report is to be a resource for the future rather than historical analysis of past events.

Whilst we are focussing on ASC risks and issues there are inevitably general corporate wide issues that we are cognoscente of their impact on these services.

• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
• Derby and Derbyshire
• Devon, Plymouth and Torbay
• East Sussex, and Brighton
• Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock
• Gloucestershire
• Hampshire and Solent
• Herefordshire
• Kent
• Lancashire, Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen
• Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland
• Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire
• Norfolk
• Nottingham
• Oxfordshire
• Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent
• Suffolk
• Surrey
• Warwickshire
• Worcestershire
• West Sussex

Early ASC Leadership

Senior ASC leaders must shape operating models, safeguarding structures and partnership arrangements from the outset.

Clear scope and purpose

A shared understanding of “safe and legal on day 1” avoids drift and protects statutory duties.

Robust programme management

Dedicated PMO capacity, early mobilisation, transparent reporting, and managed dependencies are essential.

Safeguarding protection

Referral pathways, thresholds, governance arrangements and case documentation must remain intact throughout transition.

Provider stability

Clear communication, continuity of payments and early contract mapping preserve fragile care markets.

Workforce support

Early communication, involvement in design, and proactive morale and wellbeing support mitigate anxiety and turnover.

Digital and data readiness

Data migration, system integration and information governance are among the highest‑risk areas and require early investment.

Performance and financial management

Robust and effective use of data to manage performance and finance.

Programme management and robust governance should be established from the start.

IT goes without saying Local Government Reorganisation is a major change both the organisations involved and the people within those organisations as well as those impacted.

It is therefore essential that the process of reorganisation is managed in line the best practice of programme management  from the outset as with any other change transformation. For instance, in Cumbria the overall programme was supported by a dedicated Programme Management Office (PMO) utilising automated reporting to enable daily tracking of progress against delivery plans. Each workstream was supported by a Theme Programme Manager and Project Officers from within the PMO. Even with the success of this process one of the lessons taken away was this PMO resource should have been set up sooner at the start of the process.

Clear scope and purpose

From the outset, one of the most significant lessons for Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole councils was the need for absolute clarity about what the reorganisation was trying to achieve. The councils discovered early on that simply understanding the scale of ambition and agreeing what “safe and legal on day 1” meant in practice, was essential. Without this shared definition, programmes risked drifting into unrealistic expectations or losing sight of critical statutory responsibilities. Establishing a clear scope not only protected essential services but also helped elected members, senior leaders and staff understand what could be achieved within the limited timeframe, and what would need to wait until the new organisations were established. This clarity reassured the workforce that their roles, responsibilities and priorities were properly understood, reducing anxiety and helping maintain morale as the system reshaped around them.

Operational models: scale vs. place

Research indicates there is no consistent relationship between the size of a council and the quality or productivity of its adult social care services. While larger scale can help absorb fixed costs, it can also lead to bureaucracy and disconnected leadership; conversely, smaller footprints often have a "superpower" in their ability to build trust and respond to local contexts.

Effective models often utilise a layered approach: collaborating at a wider scale for specialized commissioning and data analytics, while delivering high-touch, relational care through locally rooted community teams. Cumberland’s experience showed that a fully centralised specialist safeguarding model could create bottlenecks, leading the council to later realise the value of allowing community teams to lead enquiries using their holistic local knowledge.

Structure and staffing delays ripple through the whole service

Unlike standard organisational changes, TUPE does not automatically apply in local government reorganisation, meaning bespoke arrangements must be negotiated with government. This includes agreement on employment protections, harmonising terms and conditions, understanding equal pay implications, and transferring pension liabilities. 

For ASC, where recruitment and retention are perennial challenges, the stakes are high. Any ambiguity can accelerate staff exits at the worst possible time. Ensuring early clarity on job roles, structures, and protections helps maintain stability in a workforce that cannot afford to lose capacity. 

A significant lesson for Cumbria was the delay in confirming senior roles such as Directors and Assistant Directors, and downstream service structures.

These delays had wide‑ranging consequences, creating uncertainty for staff and slowing down operational planning. The closure report acknowledges how much emotional strain officers were under throughout the programme, and nowhere is this felt more intensely than in ASC. 

Leadership is perhaps the most critical factor in a successful local government reorganisation, as a "once-in-a-generation" challenge that requires emotional intelligence, grit, and a thoughtful approach to risk. Effective leadership must balance the immediate technical requirements of being "safe and legal" with a long-term strategic vision for the new authority.

Early appointment of senior leads

A primary lesson across LGR reports and publications is the necessity of appointing "shadow" directors and chief officers as early as possible. These leaders are essential for stabilising key relationships, shaping transition plans, and providing the visible commitment needed to build workforce confidence before the new organization officially "goes live. The report shows that, where senior officers are not appointed early enough, councils struggle to make timely decisions about service design, workforce structures, and financial planning. 

For Adult Social Care, without early ASC leadership input, crucial decisions around operating models, statutory responsibilities, and safeguarding structures risk being shaped without full understanding of the complexities of care delivery. In Northamptonshire, each of the two new unitary authorities appointed its own Director of Adult Social Services (DASS) from the first day of operation. This provided immediate strategic leadership that helped maintain service quality during a fragile transition period and gave the councils time to build internal capacity.

Defining vision and values

Leaders are cautioned against letting "safe and legal" become a "shorthand for 'too hard to do,'" which can lead to risk-averse behaviour that hampers necessary innovation. Instead, high-performing systems are defined by leaders who articulate a compelling long-term vision rooted in independence, prevention, and integration.

Effective transition requires established senior political and managerial leadership commitment to build confidence across the workforce and with partners. 

Leaders must find time to define a shared purpose and clear values, agree the organisation’s values, and set ambitions (for example, promoting independence for residents or better integration with health partners). Without this, the organisation risks doing the minimum to function, rather than moving forward.

Appointing "shadow" directors and chief officers as early as possible is critical, as it empowers them to stabilise relationships and drive future service planning well before the official vesting day. For example, in Dorset, focusing on being "Safe and Legal" provided a clear structure for what was in scope, agreeing success measures early, and maintaining absolute clarity about what must be in place to be safe and legal on day 1.

Managing cultural change 

Reorganisation is described as a "people business" and leaders must proactively manage the emotional impact on staff, who may face uncertainty regarding their new roles and organisational structures. Successful leaders ensure reorganisation is something done "with" staff rather than "to" them.

Cumbria’s LGR closure report emphasises that communication from leadership needed to start earlier and be more proactive. Staff needed more reassurance, partners needed clearer guidance, and the public needed simple explanations of what was changing. 

Political and cultural alignment 

Reorganisation brings together officers and members with different histories, working styles and assumptions, for example “county thinking” vs “district thinking”.

Leaders emphasise early vision‑setting, shared values workshops, member induction, and transparent communication as central to building a unified organisation capable of delivering ASC.

Collaborative leadership

A learning point from Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole councils was the importance of collaborative leadership. The reorganisation spanned multiple councils with different histories, cultures and ways of working, as well as key NHS partners operating across the same geography. 

Identifying counterpart leaders across organisations and building strong working relationships became vital. Leaders needed not only shared values but also a willingness to challenge each other, mediate differences and keep sight of the broader public interest. 

This collaborative approach created a “push and pull” dynamic that helped maintain pace, navigate difficult decisions and ensure service transfers landed safely. Crucially, it also required honest conversations about what could realistically be achieved alongside routine business pressures and other ongoing change programmes. 

Financial sustainability

Disaggregating social care budgets is one of the most complex tasks in local government reorganisation because demand and need do not always follow population or geographic lines. A simple 50:50 or percentage-based split risks under-recognising areas with disproportionately high concentrations of complex needs or fragile provider markets. Misjudging this can leave one new council with unsustainable pressure in ASC while another inherits relative stability. Councils should push for budget splits based on actual identified costs and need rather than simple formulas. To maintain stability, Cheshire kept its Emergency Duty Team (EDT) as a single shared service for many years post-reorganisation to ensure 24/7 coverage remained robust while other complex budgets were gradually unpicked.

Early in the process consideration of the financial impact as a result of the mapping of Ordinary Residence (OR), local taxation and client revenue on new local boundaries. 

One recent example has a putative new unitary having 40 per cent of the budget requirement with 30 per cent of previous council’s population but only 25 per cent of the council tax. 

Similar disparities will occur on central to local transfer payments, such as Better Care Fund and Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund where disaggregation based on the new OR may not match demand and cost on the ground. 

The use of client level data through effective use of social care information systems to drive financial forecasting for each client could assist in mitigating this risk.

Transformation and implementation costs

Transformation and implementation costs for LGR can have a major impact on adult social care, as councils often need to create substantial reserves to ensure safe continuity of care during the transition. These costs can also escalate over time, with one council seeing its transformation budget increase from £29.5 million to more than £52 million within five years. 

Leadership frequently underestimates the true “cost of safe transition” for adult social care, which includes expensive but essential work such as rationalising ICT systems that hold critical case records, re‑establishing legal contracts with care providers, and recruiting or restructuring senior management to maintain oversight of statutory duties. 

The costs of rationalising adult social care case management systems can become a make-or-break issue if councils discover that suppliers will not reduce licence fees even when organisational structures are halved, leaving them with unavoidable technology costs.

Protecting the adult social care provider market

The literature identifies protecting the adult social care provider market as a critical priority during local government reorganisation given that up to 90 per cent of ASC spend often goes to external provision. Disruption to this ecosystem can rapidly lead to instability for the most vulnerable residents.

One of the biggest risks is the potential for “provider shock,” where changes in fee structures, workforce churn, or simple uncertainty prompt care providers to withdraw from an area or reduce their capacity. In the absence of strong, early leadership, reorganisation can unintentionally distort local care markets, particularly where shared contracts lack clear inter‑authority agreements, leading to disputes, inconsistencies, and confusion for providers operating across boundaries. 

When a county is divided into multiple new authorities, the market becomes even more exposed: one council may inherit a disproportionate share of people with complex, high‑cost needs, while another inherits more self‑funders, creating imbalanced demand and uneven pressure on providers. These risks are amplified by the sector’s existing fragility, with high vacancy rates and rural areas already struggling to sustain viable home‑care markets.

Within this context, effective market shaping becomes a crucial leadership task.

High‑performing adult social care systems depend on intelligent commissioning, a deep understanding of provider dynamics, and proactive efforts to balance cost, sustainability and risk across the market. Some areas have successfully managed this through collaborative commissioning on a larger footprint. 

For example, the West London Alliance used sub-regional procurement to control costs, reduce inter-borough competition, and specify consistent quality standards. Conversely, place-based models like the Somerset Micro-providers scheme support small community services, giving residents more choice and control through personal budgets.

ICT and digital infrastructure must be prioritised early

A further lesson concerns the integration of legacy systems and processes. CIPFA warns that although some elements can be carried over post‑vesting day, organisations must avoid simply inheriting outdated practices or letting old systems become permanent by neglect.

Reorganisation brings together district and county council functions, each with their own operational practices, IT systems, and policy frameworks. Merging these systems requires care and time and carries significant risk if mishandled. For ASC, this is critical: the service relies on accurate case records, safe data transfer, reliable finance systems for payments to providers, and robust safeguarding information pathways. 

Learning from prior reorganisations recommends early design of ICT architecture and data migration plans, with cyber security safeguards put in place quickly. 

Rationalizing ICT systems is a "make or break" issue, as legacy case management platforms were rarely designed to be partitioned or cloned. Failure to secure these systems can paralyse frontline services and lead to data breaches or the loss of critical historical records.

Directors should invest in dedicated digital programme teams as early as possible and consider inter-authority agreements for shared systems where a clean break is not immediately possible. For example, West Northamptonshire acted as the lead administrator for critical finance, payroll, and IT systems for both new unitaries to provide back-office stability during the transition. 

Safeguarding and statutory duties

Maintaining statutory compliance under the Care Act 2014 is a primary requirement for any "safe and legal" day 1 transition. Councils must ensure that high-risk functions, such as adult safeguarding (Section 42 enquiries) and mental health crisis response, have clearly assigned staff and up-to-date procedures from the moment the new authority becomes operational. 

Because reorganisation can strain expertise and capacity, some councils choose to maintain joint safeguarding arrangements during the initial year. In Cumbria, for instance, all partners advocated for keeping a single joint Safeguarding Adults Board across the two new unitaries to ensure continuity and pooled expertise during a fragile transition period.

Integration and partnership working

Reorganisation provides a unique opportunity to explicitly align housing, health, and social care leadership to drive preventative delivery. Suitable, accessible housing is a prerequisite for independence, and failure to integrate these functions can lead to unnecessary hospital stays or premature moves to residential care. 

New authorities should aim to be "integrated by design," aligning their commissioning footprints with health partners and neighbourhood teams. Maintaining and nurturing relationships with current key stakeholder partners during the transition process will also be essential and ensuring they are well informed.

• LGR Toolkit, Local Government Association (January 2026)
• The Power of Prevention and Place in New Unitary Councils – Adult Social Care and LGR, Impower, District Councils’ Network (June 2025)
• A Practical Guide…Local Government Re-Organisation – Browne Jackson (April 2025)
• Learning from the New Unitary Councils – Grant Thornton (2024)
• The Art of Local Re-Organisation – CIPFA (July 2021)
• Best practice and methodology: projects, programmes and portfolios - GOV.UK
• Cumbria Local Government Reorganisation Programme – Closure Report – Summary – KPMG - May 2024
• Cumberland & Westmorland & Furness Councils – Disaggregation Programme Review (January 2025)