One of the strongest themes emerging from the ‘LGC Summit: LGR Special’ event - which I attended last month was clear: while local government reorganisation (LGR) may create uncertainty about future structures, it should not become a reason to halt progression activity.
Across local government, leaders are balancing the challenge of preparing for potential structural change while continuing to deliver services, manage budgets, maintain cyber resilience, and meet rising expectations from residents. Understandably, many councils are cautious about committing to large-scale transformation programmes while the future shape of local government remains undecided.
Yet there is a significant risk in standing still.
History shows that periods of uncertainty can often create a temptation to defer decisions, postpone investment, and delay modernisation initiatives. The problem is that operational pressures do not stop while organisational models evolve. Technical debt continues to grow, cyber threats continue to develop, and legacy systems become more costly and complex to maintain. The longer improvement programmes are delayed, the greater the challenge and cost of addressing them in the future.
The question for public sector leaders is not, "What should we stop until LGR is confirmed?" Instead, it should be, "What investments can we make today that will create value regardless of what the future organisation looks like?"
Why no-regret investments matter
The most effective response to uncertainty is often to focus on what can be controlled. In the context of LGR, that means prioritising no-regret investments - initiatives that deliver tangible benefits today while strengthening the foundations for future transformation.
These are programmes that:
Improve operational efficiency
Reduce risk and unnecessary cost
Strengthen governance and compliance
Enhance service delivery
Create better-quality data and technology environments
Support future integration and consolidation efforts
Whether an authority ultimately remains independent or becomes part of a larger unitary structure, these improvements retain their value.
Importantly, they also help organisations avoid creating additional complexity that may need to be unwound later.
Building stronger foundations through identity and active directory modernisation
A good example is identity and access management. Many councils operate complex identity environments that have evolved over many years through organisational growth, departmental change, and the adoption of new technologies. In some cases, these environments include duplicated accounts, inconsistent processes, and varying levels of access governance.
Modernising identity services can deliver immediate benefits by:
Strengthening joiner, mover, and leaver processes
Improving privileged access management
Reducing cyber risk
Enhancing compliance and audit readiness
Creating a more consistent user experience
Simplifying future migration and integration activity
From a leadership perspective, identity is far more than an IT issue. It sits at the intersection of security, workforce productivity, and organisational resilience.
Whatever form future local government structures take, a modern and well-governed identity platform will remain a strategic asset. Clean identity data, clear governance, and robust access controls reduce risk today while making future organisational change significantly easier to manage.
Turning asset management into a strategic advantage
Another area often overlooked during periods of uncertainty is asset management.
Many councils have opportunities to unlock immediate value through greater visibility and control of their technology estate. Yet asset data is frequently fragmented across systems, suppliers, and departments.
By focusing on asset management and rationalisation, authorities can achieve measurable improvements through:
Hardware and software asset audits
Licence optimisation exercises
Configuration management database (CMDB) improvements
Supplier rationalisation programmes
Contract reviews and consolidation
Improved inventory management
The benefits are often realised quickly. Reduced software licensing costs, more accurate budgeting, improved procurement decisions, and faster support resolution all contribute to greater operational efficiency.
However, there is also a longer-term strategic benefit. Authorities that understand exactly what technology they own, where it sits and how it supports services will be in a far stronger position if future consolidation becomes necessary.
Cyber resilience cannot wait for structural certainty
If there is one area where delay carries significant risk, it is cyber security.
The threat landscape does not pause while reorganisation plans are developed. Nor do residents' expectations that councils will safeguard data and maintain critical services.
This makes the current period an ideal opportunity to continue investing in cyber assessment framework (CAF)-aligned improvements, including:
CAF maturity assessments
Vulnerability and patch management enhancement
Identity and access governance reviews
Business continuity and disaster recovery testing
Incident response planning
Asset inventory and risk management improvements
These initiatives deliver immediate resilience gains while establishing governance frameworks that can be adopted, scaled, and inherited by any future organisation.
For public sector leaders, cyber resilience should be viewed as a foundational capability rather than a discretionary transformation project. The cost of delay can be far greater than the cost of investment.
Looking beyond cost savings
While no-regret programmes often deliver measurable financial savings, focusing solely on the cost reduction case risks understating their broader value. The real benefit lies in creating organisations that are more resilient, efficient, and better equipped to meet the challenges facing local government.
Improving identity governance, strengthening asset management, and enhancing cyber resilience all help to reduce complexity across the organisation. Employees spend less time navigating inefficient processes, managing duplicate systems, or addressing avoidable issues, allowing more focus on delivering services and supporting residents. At the same time, better-quality data, stronger governance and clearer accountability improve decision making and provide leaders with greater confidence in the information they use to shape future plans.
These investments also help create organisational capacity at a time when many councils are being asked to do more with limited resources. By streamlining processes, reducing duplication, and improving operational visibility, authorities can free up time and resources that can be redirected towards service improvement and strategic priorities.
Perhaps most importantly, these programmes strengthen the foundations upon which future transformation will depend. Whether councils remain independent organisations or become part of a new unitary authority, the ability to rely on accurate data, secure systems, robust governance, and efficient processes will be critical to delivering sustainable public services. The organisations that invest in these capabilities now will be better positioned not only to manage change, but to lead it.
Preparing for whatever comes next
LGR will undoubtedly reshape organisational boundaries across parts of the public sector. What it will not change is the need for secure systems, effective governance, efficient operations, and high-quality services.
The councils that emerge strongest from this period are unlikely to be those that waited for certainty before acting. They will be the organisations that used uncertainty as an opportunity to strengthen their foundations.
By investing in practical, no-regret improvements now, public sector leaders can create cleaner technology estates, better data, stronger governance, improved cyber resilience, and more efficient ways of working. These capabilities deliver value today and provide the building blocks for successful transformation tomorrow.
LGR may change the structure of local government, but it should not delay progress. The challenge for leaders is not whether to improve, but where to focus their efforts so that every investment made today helps prepare their organisation for whatever comes next.
Explore our local government reorganisation hub for practical guidance on workforce planning, governance, procurement, people data, and digital transformation. Discover the insights and support that can help you make confident decisions today while preparing for tomorrow.
