The branch is increasingly concerned about the impact of LGR on UNISON West Sussex members and the essential services they provide.
To this end, we issued this press release to South East media and hope to see some coverage shortly.
PRESS RELEASE
“Local MPs and Council leaders should be terrified of LGR.”
Sunday 4th October 2026
For immediate release
County Hall trade union, UNISON West Sussex, representing 6,600 members working in public services across the county of West Sussex today issued a stark warning.
Dan Sartin, Branch Secretary, said “Local MPs and Council leaders should be terrified of LGR. When vital council services are struggling after 16 years of continuous austerity, to layer on the biggest change to local government since 1974 is madness. We fully expect, if the plans go ahead, to be picking up the pieces for years, sorting out the mess of the contractual issues and team reorganisations that will arise. It will be massively destabilising at a time of huge budget and service pressures. And for what? No-one can explain what the benefits are.”
Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) is currently on pause in West Sussex since September 7th when the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner MP, withdrew reorganisation decisions for Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk and paused reorganisation processes and implementation timelines for 14 other local government areas. West Sussex was included in these 14, and it became the third occasion that no decision had been taken by Government ministers on new West Sussex local authority delivery areas.
The current Government position to pause and review LGR implementation is however welcomed by UNISON. UNISON is urging the Government to use the period of review to stop its plans for LGR in the 18 areas until local government finances are on a stable footing and LGR itself is fully-funded.
Dan Sartin, Branch Secretary at County Hall trade union, UNISON West Sussex said, “Without funding restoration, and following savage austerity cuts since 2010, LGR will be fundamentally destabilising to public service delivery and to our members in West Sussex.”
“LGR risks undermining council services over several years, creating a long period of unnecessary uncertainty. Our members providing essential services are on their knees after more than a decade of austerity and relentless restructuring, and the additional uncertainty is creating anxiety. They are left uncertain about their employer’s identity, their job roles and their terms and conditions in future years.”
UNISON West Sussex outlined their fears:
- Splitting West Sussex into 2 new smaller authorities will require staff at West Sussex County Council to undergo TUPE and consultation processes, and additionally to go through HR-led organisational change processes at some future point.
- Splitting up hundreds of delivery teams currently within a single employer will require a significant undertaking of reorganisation, consultation, employee selection, redeployment and reconfiguration, which staff will find disruptive and stressful when it takes place.
- Some staff will avoid going through this by bringing forward individual decisions to retire earlier than was planned.
- It is unclear that sufficient time exists to manage such organisational change effectively prior to the vesting date of 1st April 2028 when new authorities will come into being.
- The LGR plans under consideration risk creating imbalances of demographic and financial challenges between new authorities, building in future instability.
- The significant additional workload LGR represents, on top of ‘business as usual’, for local authority leaderships and particular departments, such as Human Resources, is not sustainable and deflects those departments from the important day to day work they lead on.
Mr Sartin continued, “If clear benefits could be identified for residents that would be one thing. But they simply are not there. Government must rethink during this pause as their plans will not do any good. Local MPs and Councillors urging the Government on should think again. Be careful what you wish for. Public services are a matter of life and death for some vulnerable county residents. Staff are doing an excellent job under duress, but teams are feeling the pressure and we as their trade union see the consequences of this every day.”
“The spiralling cost of social care for children and adults means West Sussex County Council is predicting a budget overspend of £24.5 million for this year. These are scary figures and tell the real story of what is happening since austerity was introduced. To try and make fundamental changes of the scale of LGR against this backdrop won’t work. Let council leaderships and teams get on with the massive challenge of delivering services against this backdrop, rather than diverting them to complex and bureaucratic changes to county council staffing, contracts, properties and finances. We need fair local government funding restored by this Labour Government before you can even think about risking this kind of change.”
No definitive timeline has been given by Government Ministers for when they will announce the findings of their ‘pause and review’ of LGR.
Four in five councils across England, Scotland, and Wales face a combined funding gap of nearly £4 billion for 2027/28, projected to rise to £7.1 billion by 2028/29, according to UNISON’s annual report Bridging the Gap. The union believes that filling these financial black holes is the most urgent priority for Government and that MPs and councillors should be fighting for this too, rather than LGR.
More information:
- Please contact Dan Sartin, Branch Secretary on 07899 844324.
- UNISON West Sussex is a local government branch of UNISON serving the County with 6,600 full members and 750 retired members.
- It is the only recognised trade union for County Council corporate staff and support staff (i.e. non-teachers) working in West Sussex maintained schools.
- Local website: https://unisonwestsussex.org.uk/
- Bridging the Gap report by UNISON: https://unisondam.widen.net/s/gfmlgwgqvf/council-funding-gap-report-2026