The cancellation of local elections (Some councillors in England could stay for more than extra year under shake-up plans, 5 February) means that the government and those council leaders who will gain most from the planned reorganisation will not have to face voters to justify the cost to them.
The proposed mergers of district councils and splitting up of county councils to form new unitary councils was examined in a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report commissioned by the County Councils Network in 2020. This showed that all the options to create multiple unitary councils were extremely expensive and disruptive.
