New research from Access PaySuite reveals the scale of the balancing act local authority finance leaders face as councils prepare for the biggest local government shake-up for decades.
96% of finance leaders in local authorities admit they are struggling to balance financial stability with citizen experience as councils across England prepare for Local Government Reorganisation (LGR).
The findings are from research commissioned by payments technology provider Access PaySuite, part of The Access Group, which works with half of the existing unitary authorities and more than 200 local authorities across the UK.
It surveyed 100 finance leaders working in local authorities, as well as conducting focus groups with unitary authority leaders and industry expert insights, to understand the tensions at the heart of the reorganisation process.
As county and district councils are merged into new unitary authorities ahead of an April 2028 deadline, finance teams are being tasked with delivering savings and efficiencies while simultaneously protecting frontline services and improving how residents interact with their council.
The research suggests that, for the vast majority of authorities, this balance is not being achieved.
Jamie Symons, Head of Product and Engineering at Access PaySuite, said
“This is a major piece of research which highlights common themes that are troubling finance leaders as they progress through the LGR transformation process. There’s no doubt that reorganisation is a huge opportunity, with the potential to improve services for residents, rebalance budgets and enable teams to deliver better work, but there are clear challenges ahead.
“The good news is that councils have navigated these challenges before and the focus groups we ran with those who’ve been through the process showed a consistent theme: while you can’t plan for every eventuality, you can build the capacity to discover it early.
“As we move towards April 2028, leadership, delivery teams, and suppliers will need to unite around a shared vision to make it a reality.”
The pressures behind the numbers
Councils are already facing financial strain from record council tax arrears, which have reached £7.4 billion in England, as well as £655 million of social housing rental arrears.
There are several other compounding pressures that are making this balancing act harder to achieve:
- 36% of finance leaders said budgetary and funding constraints were the primary barrier to reorganisation.
- One in four reported that aggressive or unrealistic programme timelines were a key challenge.
- 38% said maintaining performance in statutory services, such as social care and waste management, was a key success metric for their programme.
Andrew Rogers, a Socitm associate with more than three decades of experience supporting local authorities on digital transformation projects, said:
“A typical region could have 11 councils, and each council might have 200 applications each with significant overlap between them. However, the systems used by a typical district council will be very different to those in place with a county council. The key risk is being operational on day one when the environment you’re coming from is so complicated.”
Georgina Maratheftis, Associate Director, Local Public Services, techUK, has been working closely with the Local Government Association and tech suppliers to support them through LGR. She added:
“This is such a big management change and there’s a focus on being safe and legal on day one, but the risk is that the citizen is forgotten. As you go through the LGR process the citizen needs to be at the heart of the redesign and reorganisation.
“LGR is the opportunity – and should become the blueprint – for us to create the council of the future.”
Read the research in full: The Unitary Authority payment challenge
About the research
Access PaySuite commissioned an independent survey of 100 finance leaders working within local authorities across the UK to understand how prepared councils are to plan, implement and measure the success of LGR digital transformation. The findings form part of a wider series of research, expert insight, focus groups and unitary authority case studies published by Access PaySuite to help guide local authorities through the LGR programme.
About Access PaySuite
Access PaySuite is a leading UK-based, FCA regulated provider of payment solutions and embedded finance, supporting businesses and organisations across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. Part of The Access Group, Access PaySuite delivers payment and financial product solutions that support the growth of businesses and organisations, helping them better serve their people, customers and communities. Access PaySuite supports more than 6,000 customers, processes over 250 million transactions and transacts more than £23 billion in payment volume every year.
