On behalf of its membership, the cross-party LGA regularly submits to Government
consultations, briefs parliamentarians and responds to a wide range of parliamentary inquiries. Our recent
responses to government consultations and parliamentary briefings can be found here.
Government must be mindful of balancing interests of national growth with the role of local councils and councillors, as well as trust and democracy in the planning system.
Local government in England is currently going through a process which will result in the largest reorganisation since 1974. The areas impacted are shown below, however, clearly several areas and councils have gone through similar reorganisation in the recent past. The purpose of this briefing is to summarise the lessons learnt that have been drawn to together in numerous reports and publication, which are referenced at the end of this document, but focus with a particular adult social care (ASC) lens.
While we broadly support the Government’s intention to streamline and speed up the planning system, we remain concerned about the potential erosion of local democracy and the limited flexibility created by a highly standardised national scheme of delegation as set out in our response to the previous technical consultation.
Councils want to work as partners with central government to tackle poverty and carbon reduction with a focus of eradicating poverty and maximising the use of waste heat from incinerators and data centres, for example. This can only be achieved by working with local leadership.
This paper sets out the Local Government Association’s proposed responses to the Department of Health and Social Care’s consultation on the Social Work Bursary and the Education Support Grant. The consultation is being conducted through an online survey, and the response must be submitted via the official digital form. The draft positions provided here reflect the LGA’s analysis of the proposals and sector feedback and will be entered into the online consultation form once approval has been granted.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government held a consultation from 12 February to 26 March 2026 on proposed geographies for producing spatial development strategies.