In most cases, devolution means electing a Mayor and moving some powers, with the money to implement them, from central government to a new mayoral combined authority, such as strategic transport, economic development, and skills.
Local government reorganisation means creating new unitary authorities responsible for most local services. In Hampshire, we currently have a two-tier system: The county council is responsible for adult social care, children’s services, schools, roads, libraries, and the tips, and the districts and boroughs, like Test Valley, are responsible for waste collection, planning, housing, leisure, licensing, parks, and open spaces. They also manage critical but non-statutory priorities, such as town centre regeneration and community grants.
Whilst I broadly welcome devolution as a mechanism for attracting more inward investment from both government and the private sector (with the Mayoralty most probably merging with the current Police and Crime Commissioner role anyway), I think local government reorganisation is an unwelcome distraction. This is especially true for authorities such as Test Valley, which was recently inspected by the Local Government Association and found to be a high-performing and community-centred organisation.
On the face of it, unitarisation looks attractive. There would be far less confusion about which council is responsible for what, and there may be some efficiencies in terms of scale. However, that doesn’t necessarily translate into cheaper council tax. (For example, our neighbouring Unitary, Wiltshire Council, charges £1,805.73 per annum on an average band D property. Southampton’s is slightly more. The combined charge for Hampshire County Council and TVBC is £1,697.15*).
For me, the clear downsides are that the new, more prominent authorities (a population of around 500,000 people rather than 130,000 in TVBC currently) will be more remote and less agile than the current district and boroughs, which I fear will make for much poorer local services. For example, several residents contacted me recently about their bins that had been missed during one of our waste collection rounds. I contacted the appropriate person, and the bins were emptied the next day as Test Valley runs its own in-house waste collection service. It would be much more difficult to do this on a larger scale, which means contracting it out to the private sector and having much less control to sort out any problems.
My other primary concern is the rising cost of adult social care and, to some extent, children’s services, which currently make up around 85% of the County Council’s budget. This has led to Hampshire having to make significant cuts to other services. Being a separate organisation, Test Valley’s services have been protected from that, and we are already considering what to do to fill the gap left by the County Council’s decision to end homelessness support in March 2026. The proposed changes mean that all services, including those that Test Valley currently provides, will come under increased pressure and, in some cases, potentially disappear.
Therefore, I believe the government is approaching this in the wrong way. The problem of how social care is delivered and funded should be tackled first before potentially sacrificing more local government services. This is not a party-political point. My party should have done much more to reform social care while in government. Still, it is disappointing that the current government has recently confirmed that they are setting up yet another commission to look at this, which will not report until 2028.
However, the government has been clear that local government must accept these changes. Therefore, I believe it is incumbent on me and all councillors to try to make the best of the situation to benefit residents. Recently, I have attended several briefing sessions with government ministers and discussed the issue with fellow council leaders.
At those sessions, it was explained that there are three options:
1. To get in the fast lane for devolution, which means local government reorganisation comes after the setting up of the Mayoral Combined Authority rather than before, but both are inevitably closely linked.
2. We agree to progress Local Government Reorganisation as a priority, agreeing to submit new Council proposals by May.
3. We do not agree to either of these paths. In any event, the government wants plans for new councils lodged by September. If we do not do that, they will create the proposals for new Councils and proceed with those plans.
Last week, all the Upper Tier authorities in Hampshire (The County, Southampton, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight) wrote a joint letter to the government asking to pursue option one. It is now down to ministers to decide by the end of January whether or not to place Hampshire in the priority programme for devolution and postpone the HCC elections scheduled for this May. This will enable the government to run a public consultation and set up the Mayoral Combined Authority. I have also been told that if Ministers agree to the proposal, the election for a new Mayor of Hampshire would probably occur in May 2026.
I think this is the least-worst option. It gives us the main prize of devolution but also gives us longer to consider how reorganisation might work and on what boundaries in a cross-party way, giving residents time to have they, too.
Crucially, option one also ensures that Test Valley will exist for at least another three years or more, ensuring that we can continue to deliver on our town centre regeneration aspirations in both Andover and Romsey and other priority projects.
This is a time of change for those of us who have the privilege to be councillors or work in local government – and whilst I recognise that residents might consider this as being overly concerned with structures – I wanted to clarify the details. Hence, you are aware of what is going on. We are very much at the beginning of this journey – and I will continue to keep you informed.
*Made up of £1,533.24 from HCC and £163.91 from TVBC, excluding police, fire and town and parish council precepts.