We went from devo to limbo. The government’s decision to pause local government reorganisation across East Sussex and Brighton and Hove should prompt more than a collective sigh of relief.
It should prompt a serious question like how did we get here? Councils already stretched thin by years of austerity have had to pour scarce money, staff time and political attention into a reorganisation that has now been stopped for a review.
Yesterday (Monday 7 September), ministers told councils to stop implementing the decisions announced in July while the programme is reviewed.
For our area, that puts on hold the proposed expansion of Brighton and Hove to include Peacehaven, Telscombe Cliffs and East Saltdean. Local elections in May 2027 will now go ahead on existing boundaries.
To be clear, there is a legitimate case for reforming local government. The current system can be fragmented, confusing and overly centralised.
I support genuine devolution that shifts power and resources away from Westminster and gives communities a real democratic voice over transport, housing, climate policy and economic development.
But devolution and reorganisation are not the same thing. Moving lines on a map doesn’t, by itself, transfer power. And reorganisation isn’t free.
Brighton and Hove’s own estimates previously put the cost of its proposed reorganisation at around £8.7 million. East Sussex warned that separating services to transfer communities into Brighton and Hove could add roughly £3.25 million to implementation costs.
These are estimates, not bills already paid, but they give some sense of what’s at stake.
Then there’s the cost that’s harder to put in a spreadsheet: staff time. Officers across Sussex have spent months working through governance, finance, staffing, IT, property, legal arrangements, service boundaries and consultation.
That work doesn’t just disappear because the government has pressed pause. Every hour spent modelling a new structure is an hour not spent on homelessness, social care, planning, housing standards or the hundreds of less visible tasks residents rely on.
Much of my own work has looked at what happens when institutions and communities face prolonged insecurity – and uncertainty has consequences.
Staff are asked to prepare for jobs that may change or disappear. Teams don’t know who their employer will be. Managers are left planning services while the organisational map beneath them keeps shifting.
People become tired, cautious and distracted – not because they’re not doing their jobs well but because prolonged organisational uncertainty does that to people. Residents carry that uncertainty too.
For someone receiving adult social care, the important question isn’t which authority draws the neatest organisational chart. It’s whether the person who understands their needs will still be there.
For a parent of a child with SEND (special educational needs or disabilities), it’s whether support gets interrupted. For someone facing homelessness, it’s whether they even know which council is responsible.
And for residents of Peacehaven, Telscombe and East Saltdean, it’s also about belonging and democratic identity. Many have said, repeatedly and clearly, that they don’t want to be moved into Brighton and Hove.
People don’t experience local government as administrative “footprints”. They experience a care worker arriving, a bin being collected, a housing officer answering the phone, a bus turning up, a school place being found and not closing.
That’s exactly why this pause should become an opportunity to rethink the underlying philosophy of reform. We should be asking less about how to build bigger administrative units and more about how to build stronger, better-funded, more democratic local government.
After more than a decade of austerity, councils don’t principally suffer from having the wrong lines on a map. They suffer from chronic financial pressure, rising demand, a housing crisis and the steady erosion of preventative services – and no reorganisation is going to make any of that disappear.
Government (and the council) should now publish the costs incurred so far, compensate councils for unavoidable expenditure created by this process, give staff and residents a clear timetable and make sure any future proposal comes with credible financial evidence and genuine local involvement behind it.
Change can be necessary. But change imposed without enough certainty, resources or public ownership just becomes another cost borne by the very people local government exists to serve.
If we’re serious about devolution, the starting point should be simple: trust communities, fund councils properly and move power downwards. Otherwise, we risk spending millions reorganising scarcity rather than ending it.
Bruno De Oliveira is a Green councillor who represents Hollingdean and Fiveways on Brighton and Hove City Council.
Bloody well done. One of the few local politicians who speak some sense. He is respected by people in both main parties and officers. I heard from the grapevine that officers would agree with this chaotic approach to devolution. What a s***show.
Good to remind ourselves that devolution and local government reorganisation are two different, but intertwined, processes. We often confuse these in our discussions, which does nothing to improving everyone’s understanding of them.
The councillor rightly points out the costs of LGR, but has forgotten to include that money is received from central government to pay for this, which makes his call for compensation feel a little bit like an argumentum ad ignorantiam.
I’m reading the line where De Olivia claims staff time isn’t easily tracked on a spreadsheet. I think the millions of people on any form of payroll would disagree. I think he is also omitting that staff time isn’t a zero-sum, and that roles have been created for the purpose of administrating LGR. Councillor also claims that councils don’t principally suffer from having the wrong lines on a map, except, this is THE biggest barrier to tackling the housing challenges in Brighton.
I do agree with him that taking the time to get it right is a good thing. The definition of what is right will likely change from person-to-person, as we’ve seen in the discourse so far, and surely more yet to come! I think there is still a major gap in explaining and articulating how LGR fits into devolution, and what means in tangible terms for the individual, for the city, and for the region – and maybe that’s the starting point we need to be at?