April brings spring and a sense of renewal, but in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset that renewal will be very different this year.
On the first day of next month more than 20 councils will disappear to be replaced by four new unitaries.
Instead of being face-down in Easter eggs, the new chief executives and their senior teams will probably be face-down in accounts and council structures.
So, what advice can those who have been through the process offer these new council bosses?
‘Everyone will focus on 1 April,’ says Rob Bridge, who became chief executive of the new North Northamptonshire Council back in 2020.
‘Actually, that’s one day and the hard work starts afterwards. You’ve got to create the identity, you’ve got to probably deal with a number of different challenges. You’ve got to realise it’s a marathon rather than a sprint.’
That can be hard when there will be an expectation that the shiny new council will transform things overnight, especially among some politicians.
For neighbouring chief executive Anna Earnshaw at fledgling West Northamptonshire Council, this was managed by working with councillors to quickly develop a clear vision for the future.
‘We articulated with them what we were going to deliver and what our ambition was,’ she says.
‘We were very clear about the road map and in our narrative with wider members about the steps we would have to take.’
Communication and engagement with staff and residents, as well as members, is clearly crucial. There is a need to create an identity that everyone can collectively buy into.
‘The big thing for me was staff engagement and bringing together different values and cultures and how you embrace and bring everyone along on that journey,’ says Mr Bridge.
And similarly, his neighbouring chief admits they did ‘a huge amount of work’ on behaviours and values.
‘It was a lot of effort but definitely worthwhile,’ Ms Earnshaw adds.
But the West Northants chief would also do some things differently if starting again. As well as putting a hold on the sale of assets and the letting of big contracts, she wishes there had been a period of ‘trueing up’ across all the finances.
‘You don’t know what you know until you hit the end of your first year,’ she explains. ‘There have been all sorts of very bizarre quirks that we’ve been caught out with.’
These unknowns seems to be something of a reality for all previous reorganisations.
‘You can be derailed by things you can’t anticipate, so you’ve got to be ready for those,’ Mr Bridge points out.
Matt Prosser, chief executive at Dorset Council – now approaching its fourth anniversary – advises new authorities to ‘think the unthinkable’ about what could go wrong.
Ultimately though, it is about ensuring a consistent service for residents straight away.
The Dorset chief puts it succinctly: ‘Make sure no one notices any differences in services on day one.’
Although, he adds that if people don’t notice any difference in six to 12 months, then the new council has ‘maybe not quite got it right’…
The top tip from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council’s chief Graham Farrant is simple: ‘Project manage the hell out of it.’
There is virtual unanimity on the biggest opportunity on offer – the chance to bring all services together for the benefit of residents.
Ms Earnshaw says reorganisation has provided the opportunity to look at how services work together with a clear aim of making them more holistic and better for residents.
‘You can’t do that unless you’re in a unitary where you have got all the component parts.’
For Mr Prosser it s all about having the ‘legitimacy to create a new organisation’ and the ‘ability to innovate and think more creatively around solutions’ for residents.
Unsurprisingly, it seems much of this sage advice has already been dispensed to the new chiefs ahead of ‘Vesting Day’.
The fact that Somerset’s Duncan Sharkey can say all top three officer tiers have been recruited to suggests he has already taken on board Mr Bridge’s advice to ‘make sure you understand what your staffing base looks like and whether you’ve got big areas of vacancy’.
The ‘marathon rather than a sprint’ warning appears to have reached Richard Flinton at North Yorkshire Council when he refers to ‘lifting and shifting’ teams into the new authority so the ‘change we need to deliver will be ongoing from there’.
‘We’ve been very focused around the customer front end and making sure that all of the infrastructure of the council around our HR systems, our finance systems, our website and internet are able to operate,’ he adds.
So, that is ‘no one noticing any difference’ covered too. And watching out for anything unexpected going wrong has also been taken to heart.
‘We’re setting up an almost emergency incident situation,’ admits Sam Plum, the chief at new Westmorland & Furness Council.
‘For the next six weeks we’re going to be meeting on a daily basis and just checking if there’s anything that has come to light that we weren’t aware of.’ More than anything, though, there is a sense of raring to go.
‘I just want to get back to doing the job that I love doing but in a brand new council,’ Ms Earnshaw says, ‘where we can really start to think about what the benefits of local government reorganisation can bring and how can we make those real for our residents.’
