Principle 6 – Delivers high-quality, innovative and sustainable public services that are responsive to local need and enable wider public sector reform

Local government reorganisation provides once-in-a-generation opportunity for the harmonisation of public services across Surrey, with the diverse patchwork of lower-tier services, currently delivered by the eleven districts, harmonised across the county’s broader three functional areas. Integrating these services with those currently provided by Surrey County Council will provide greater coherence and clarity for residents and stakeholders. Current complementary services like public health and environmental health, infrastructure delivery and local planning, and waste collection and disposal are managed separately. Unitarisation will bring all these services into one cohesive organisation.

With boundaries that align with Surrey’s functional economic geography, the three new unitary councils will be best placed to provide coherent strategic direction across the piece, able to provide holistic, preventative and needs based services, complemented by those devolved from government to the new Surrey Strategic Authority, delivering improved outcomes for residents and realising economic growth.

These opportunities are, however, not without their risks. It’s vital that services transition seamlessly from the current councils to the new unitary authorities on Vesting Day. This is especially important for crucial services that support our most vulnerable residents including social care, children’s services, SEND and homelessness. How we plan to successfully do this at pace is set out below in detail in our implementation and transformation plan for reorganisation. As it sets out, by learning from experience elsewhere, we will take a phased approach to implementation and transformation, built upon robust and effective governance that prioritises maintaining key service delivery throughout the transition period and paves the way for innovative transformation. Our priority is to achieve economic growth and improve outcomes for residents whilst also creating financially sustainable unitary councils in the short and longer-term. 

Local authorities are best placed to deliver high-quality and innovative public services when their boundaries align with the functional economic geography and local identities that residents and businesses recognise on the ground. As demonstrated above, our proposal for three unitary authorities will ensure that the new local government landscape in Surrey is reflective of the county’s recognised three district places and functional economic areas.  This too will be complemented by the regionalised way some Surrey County Council services are already delivered on the ground, particularly for social care.[1]

But it’s not just identities and economies that these new authorities will align with. Our proposed boundaries will, in many instances, align with the networks of collaboration across the public sector that already exist, and have grown organically over many years, in response to the reality of Surrey’s local communities. These already bring together both tiers of local authority with partners like health, as well as other partners, to deliver preventative, holistic, and outcome focused services for residents.

In North Surrey, the three boroughs have been engaged in an integrated place agenda for health and care, with Northwest Surrey Alliance. There has been a collective contribution to Alliance priorities and plans, and with a view to increasing consistency in service delivery across the Alliance’s area. The three boroughs that form the new North Surrey unitary, have worked collaboratively over many years in the area of health and wellbeing, and sought to develop existing and new services and functions to ensure a consistent model of service delivery across the region, aligning with the requirement for consistency of offer across the geography to system partners and residents.

Each share a commitment to preventative service delivery to improve health outcomes across the area, including financial investment of £50,000 per authority to deliver joint projects with local voluntary and community organisations, via localised place partnerships and hyper local partnerships in identified areas of deprivation.  This commitment would translate into a new unitary environment, bringing all parties together under one geography with a singular authority working directly with health.  

Meanwhile, in East Surrey, there is a longstanding and well recognised sub-regional identity, with the four authorities that will make up the new East Surrey Unitary authority having been clustered together as a coherent entity for decade. Cementing a pre-existing, recognised sub-region into a single entity will improve local government and service delivery from both traditional borough and county services alike.

The long established joint working relationships in the East Surrey area that can be built upon in implementing our proposal include existing joint delivery structures for services such as homelessness, building control and transformation; upper-tier services delivered across the entire area by Reigate and Banstead on the county council’s behalf; and cooperative working with the voluntary, community and faith sector across the East Surrey area, with many organisations already operating across this geography, such as the YMCA and Thames Reach. A matching geography will support future work and increase opportunities for efficiency through joint approaches between the sectors.

Finally, in West Surrey, Guildford and Waverley borough councils have, for a number of years, been collaborating to deliver significant financial savings, operational improvements, and improved outcomes for residents across both boroughs. The success of this work was reaffirmed late last year in an independent report by Local Partnerships, a joint venture between HM Treasury, the Welsh Government and the Local Government Association.[2]

By creating new authorities that aligns with existing joint working and across an area with shared and similar needs, this can help to deliver further public service reform, as best practices and efficiencies can be shared and implemented across the new organisation, leading to better value for money. For example, one of the most significant current cost pressures for local authorities is emergency and temporary accommodation for homelessness. Joint working across a meaningful geography, with the already identified commonalities of housing demand, and shared access to stock and nomination rights will aid getting more people into accommodation more quickly. This will lead to less disruption to work, schooling and health needs, and help people remain within an area that they recognise as home, within their community. Overall, this will help reduce emergency accommodation cost pressures and deliver better outcomes for residents.

These benefits, however, can only be delivered most effectively where the new unitary authority aligns with a coherent and functional geography. Whilst there will continue to be individual local needs and considerations, place-based working across a cohesive unitary area has the potential to provide significant real benefits for organisational efficiency, local opportunities, and residents and communities.

A manageable geography delivering services as close to residents as possible enables an inherently more responsive service which works within a place, recognising its unique and differing needs. This is particularly important for resident satisfaction where potholes, grass cutting, bin collection and green spaces, are all of critical importance, as well as for operative run services such as waste collection and disposal, parking management, and cleansing which rely on local delivery and knowledge.

A two-unitary configuration for Surrey will lead to more fragmented services with abortive work due to lack of cohesion, travel needs and general misalignment with the reality of the local area. Conversely, these factors are tried and tested at the three unitary delivery level.

[1] As set out in Surrey County Council’s ‘Commissioning Strategy for Older People 2021-2030’ and ‘Joint Commissioning Strategy for Children, Young People, and their Families in Surrey 2022’.

[2] ‘Analysis of collaboration benefits’, Local Partnerships, 21 November 2024.