‘Stop, collaborate and listen.’ Yes, I ended an interview about #localgovernmentreorganisation with Vanilla Ice – but also it’s a reasonable summary! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_localgovernmentreorganisation-lgr-ugcPost-7477441205124030466-lNG3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho
‘Stop, collaborate and listen.’ Yes, I ended an interview about #localgovernmentreorganisation with Vanilla Ice – but also it’s a reasonable summary!
Greg Campbell, Strategic Director at Rochford and Brentwood talked about what it’s like to be inside #LGR – not the the hopeful policy-paper version, the version where they’re running today’s councils while designing tomorrow’s.
And, in Brentwood and Rochford’s case, also preparing to decouple a successful partnership into different future unitaries.
Most of the public conversation about LGR is still about maps, governance, savings, vesting dates, politics. All important – but the bigger risk is less visible: leadership capacity.
The same senior teams are being asked to maintain service continuity, manage political uncertainty, retain staff, fill vacancies, support anxious teams, attend several LGR meetings daily, keep councillors informed, answer questions they don’t yet have answers to, and make decisions about structures that will affect their own futures.
Not a test of heroic individual leadership, a(nother) stress test of the leadership system.
Information flow. Decision rhythm. Trust. Governance. Permission. Recovery time. Middle management confidence. Political handling. The ability to say what’s known, what isn’t known, and when the next point of clarity will come.
Greg was clear: you don’t need mavericks charging through the system, , you need to channel all energy into brave and honest leadership – telling staff what you can, not pretending certainty, setting up so people beyond the inner circle see enough, understand enough, and step in with confidence.
LGR could easily collapse to a tiny group of exhausted people who know everything, decide everything, and become their own bottlneck; the temptation under pressure is to pull in, control more, communicate less.
The opposite is harder, but better; Ice Ice, Baby.
And vesting day isn’t the finish line – it’s when a new council inherits every unresolved weakness, at larger scale. If you *only* manage‘safe and legal’, it should function, so start with…
Greg said disaggregation can’t become disintegration. councils need to keep working across wider geographies, share data, digital and tech platforms not carve ‘em up, retain some contracts and partnerships. The new scale must be used for a new operating logic and better services.
At RedQuadrant, this is exactly where our LGR work is focused: the bridge between transition and transformation. Safe and legal is hard, critical, not enough. Councils also need leadership grip, service design, governance, programme discipline and org-wide confidence to make the new authority worth the disruption.
Advice from Greg to councils behind on the journey? You can never start too early. Take stock, don’t get dragged into the minutiae, keep the wider purpose visible, communicate all the way through.
What do you think is the thing most at risk of being lost in the rush to get to vesting day?
View the full video here: https://youtu.be/LCh6cCjUaPI?si=SYYAu5jepREw1ERj
We’ll be posting more LGR videos shortly .You can view the another LGR interview with Manjeet Gill here: https://youtu.be/YDhsdGVVBsg
And you can read more about our LGR offer here: https://www.redquadrant.com/lgrhub
chosen path 