Building the new council

Who It's For

Leaders, cabinets and senior officers of councils moving to new unitary authorities

Overview

Building the new council is a six-week masterclass for the leaders, cabinets and senior officers creating the new unitary councils of 2027 and 2028. It follows the work from district to unitary, drawing on Huish and Milliner's From District into Unitary and its five phases, through organisational design and target operating models, the member and officer partnership in a shadow authority, bringing cultures together, and keeping staff and unions with you, to vesting day and beyond. Each week includes a live session with people who have been there, from a leader of a recent reorganisation to the first year of a new council, and it closes with Tri-borough and Northamptonshire.

Aims

This programme aims to help the people building new councils hold structure, culture, people and politics together through reorganisation, so the new council is built in people as well as on paper, and to leave with a 100-day plan for the new council, tested with peers.

In summary, you will be able to:

1. 1Explain the drivers, phases and evidence of local government reorganisation, and what the current English framework means for your new council and its partners.
2. 2Design the new organisation's operating model, culture and member and officer arrangements, attending to identity, merger syndrome and the resilience of people through transition.
3. 3Plan a 100-day programme for the new council that embeds the strategy, secures the benefits and sustains learning beyond vesting day.

What you'll develop

Over the programme, you and your cohort will be able to:

1. 1Explain the five drivers of structural change and what the National Audit Office evidence says about whether reorganisations deliver.
2. 2Identify the six models of shared services and place a partnership on the seven degrees of working with others.
3. 3Explain Chandler's finding that structure follows strategy and identify when a proposed reorganisation reverses that sequence.
4. 4Describe what a corporate plan contains and trace the five levels of the golden thread from vision to residents' lived experience.
5. 5Explain Schein's three levels of culture and why change aimed only at artefacts and espoused values tends to fail.
6. 6Explain why the political and managerial top teams must work as one, and the distinct roles of members, officers and statutory officers.
7. 7Explain Huish and Milliner's six lessons and why middle managers, as Balogun and Johnson found, are the pivot point of structural change.
8. 8Identify which frameworks, including the Strategic Choice Approach, Cynefin, Five Forces, Blue Ocean and Rumelt's kernel, were in play in each of the three cases.