Panel discussion

As reorganisation moves from preparation to delivery, the relationship between officers and members becomes one of the most complex challenges of the process. This session looks at how political leadership, member engagement, and decision-making change as councils move into shadow arrangements.

• How do you bring members on the journey when their roles and futures are changing?
• What needs to be in place to keep decision-making moving in the transitional year?
• How do you keep predecessor councillors engaged and avoid a "last one out, turn the lights off" mentality?
• How do you build culture and governance in a new authority when the people shaping it are still running the old one?

Panel discussion

This session explores the practical reality of delivering LGR while keeping existing councils running. It will look at how areas are structuring their programmes, resourcing them, and making progress even while key decisions must wait.

• How have you structured the programme, and what would you do differently?
• How do you resource LGR without hollowing out the existing organisation?
• How do you sequence disaggregation across budgets, workforce, assets and contracts, and how do you avoid one part racing ahead of the rest?
• Where are the biggest bottlenecks in delivery at this stage, and how are you getting around them?

Tech talk

This session explores the role of AI in helping new unitaries move beyond the minimum safe and legal requirements — using data, automation and intelligent systems to build financially viable councils that are designed to deliver from day one.

Roundtable discussions

Discussion topics:
1. Children's services and SEND
How do you transfer children’s services and SEND provision safely and make sure nothing is missed?
2. Adult social care
How do you maintain safe delivery through transition and build prevention and integration into the new authority?
3. Waste, highways and environmental services
How do you protect continuity in the most visible services, and what decisions cannot wait?
4. Finance and financial resilience
How do you build a financially sustainable new council when the true cost of delivery is still uncertain?
5. Planning, housing and growth
What needs to be in place to support housing delivery and growth from vesting day?
6. People, workforce and culture
How do you build one culture and one team across multiple organisations?

Panel discussion

This panel brings together senior advisors to MHCLG at the forefront of LGR to give a candid view on where things stand, what the next phase demands, and how MHCLG sees the road ahead. The session will explore:

• What success looks like in practice.
• Where areas are making the most progress and where they are struggling.
• How LGR connects to devolution, funding and the wider public service reform agend
  
  

Fireside chat

LGR is bringing major technology decisions to the forefront, with councils needing to balance short-term continuity and long-term change. This session explores the three decisions every new unitary needs to make early, and why getting them right is essential for service continuity, integration, and future transformation.

Panel discussion 

The closing session asks what it means to hand over a council in genuinely good shape, before authority shifts and the new unitary begins to take over. It will explore what should be settled now, what can safely wait, and what those who have already reached the other side wish they had done differently.

• How do you hand your organisation over in genuinely good shape?
• What should chief executives and leadership teams make sure is left in order?
• What does a new unitary inherit that no one anticipated?
• What lessons do people on the other side wish they had heard earlier?