Working together

Bringing the team back together once LGR proposals are in

With Adam Hill, chief executive, Rushcliffe Borough Council

You’ve worked with your partner authorities to come up with a suitable proposal of what local government reorganisation should look like in your area and submitted the plans to government, but what next? Adam Hill talks us through the importance of unity, even before unification becomes official.

Where are you along your LGR journey?

We’ve already got a devolved authority with the East Midlands Combined County Authority, so for us in Nottinghamshire this is now all about LGR. We put in our proposals in November, ready for a consultation in the springtime, and we should hear the outcomes in June or July 2026. That would put our vesting day - when the new authorities would go live - as 1 April 2028.

This has to be seen as an opportunity as well as a challenge. How do we bring nine authorities together into two new authorities and actually move forward in terms of service transformation, reducing costs, finding efficiencies and, ultimately, keeping our residents at the heart of what we do? The only way we can do that is in partnership with others; those that can show us how we can use new systems and new ways of working to deliver better outcomes for our communities.

How are you and your peers feeling about it?

It’s actually quite a difficult time, because through the submission we’ve gone through a competitive process – with different ideas from different authorities, some were inevitably going to be in opposition to one another. Now that proposals have gone in, however, it’s really important the we bring each other back together; that we stay together and all swim in the same direction.

Whatever happens next, this is fundamentally about people and culture. We need to keep connected and work together so that the future is aligned and co-produced, and one that ensures those real deliverables for our communities.

What are the top three things that you are trying to align around?

First, it’s about putting our residents at the heart of everything we do. With everything that we look at, whether it’s an efficiency or a new system, we’ve got to think about what it means, ultimately, to Joe and Josephine Public. How can they get a better service? We can’t do anything if it doesn’t help to improve the citizen experience.

The second one is around child, family and social services, and those that are most vulnerable in our society; those with more complex needs that require our extra help. How do we give them that extra wrap-around support?

And then the third piece is about how do we make ourselves sustainable for the future? How do we make sure that whatever this new world is, it isn’t a quick fix; that it embeds into communities. We need to be working with partners, working with the private sector, working with communities, and working with the third sector so that we become really joined up. How do we bring it all together so that we speak with one voice and have one direction of travel?

How do you envisage working with partners as you move forward?

We definitely need patience from our partners, because we are still trying to find our own feet. We’re probably going to ask for lots of different things and some of it will fall away because it won’t be as relevant as we thought it was.

There’s also an exploration that we need to do together where we can utilise some of that private sector knowledge on how to do things differently. We’re local government - we know how to deliver services - but we’re not necessarily technology or systems experts. We need partners to bring in their expertise and share the journey together.

To learn more about how we can support your technology requirements throughout the LGR transition and transformation journey, get in touch. Reduce risk, ensure service continuity and unlock new operating models with Civica.