by Gemma Roddy
There is a version of the next eighteen months that looks like crisis management. Protect services. Hit the savings target. Get to vesting day. Then figure out the rest.
That version is understandable. But it is also how organisations end up without the data capability, workforce, or partnerships they need to function. The choices that shape what a council can do in years to come are being made right now, often by default, often under pressure, often without anyone pausing to ask what they mean for the longer term.
The Local Government Association has recognised this same tension, between managing today and planning for tomorrow, and developed its LG Horizons programme in response. It looks at how local government could be led by 2040: a horizon far enough away to rise above short-term pressure, but close enough to still shape the decisions being made now.
The pressures converging on councils
Councils are managing structural financial pressure that shows no sign of easing. Demand for adult social care, children’s services, and homelessness support continues to rise while reserves, once a buffer, are thinner or have already gone.
Local government reorganisation (LGR) is simultaneously reshaping the map. The drive towards unitary and combined authorities means many councils are managing transformation from the inside while their structures are redesigned from the outside. It’s a significant ask of already stretched leadership teams.
Then there is the longer-term picture. An ageing population, rapid technological change and communities with different expectations of how public services should work and who should shape them. Central government’s reform agenda, devolution deals, and the push for neighbourhood-level delivery all point broadly in the right direction, but they also create uncertainty about roles, funding, and accountability.
Short-term financial crisis, mid-term structural reform, and long-term demographic and technological change, all landing at once, is a combination without precedent.
The gap that matters most is not ambition. It is delivery.
Working with councils across the UK on digital change and transformation, we have noticed something consistent. Councils have no shortage of transformation strategies, but what they often lack is the operational infrastructure to turn those strategies into sustained change: the data capability, the programme governance, the workforce skills, and the honest conversation about what to stop doing.
The question the 2040 horizon makes practical is not “what should local government look like in fifteen years?” It is “what do we need to do differently in the next eighteen months to be on a credible path towards that?”
Conflating these questions is how organisations can end up acting reactively rather than deliberately.
What this means in practice
Running business as usual alongside transformation is not “business as usual plus a project.” It is a categorically different job, and most people doing it did not sign up for both at once. The mental load of holding current service risk alongside future design decisions, whilst managing a workforce anxious about its own future, is genuinely high. That difficulty is not a sign that something has gone wrong but is the nature of the moment.
This is not a programme management checklist but the things that, in our experience of managing big change programmes, get neglected under pressure and matter most:
- Have honest conversations about scope
What should the council do directly? What should it commission? What should it enable others to do? These are not questions with obvious right answers, and they are politically as well as operationally complex. But councils that drift towards 2040 without working through them will find those decisions made for them by budget pressure, by reorganisation, or by default.
In an LGR context, when discussing operating models, keep asking: “Is this the choice we would make if we were thinking about what this organisation needs to be in ten years, rather than what gets us to vesting day?” Those two questions have different answers more often than people expect.
- Treat data decisions as founding decisions
Data capability is not a technology project but an organisational one. Who owns data? Who can use it? What decisions is it informing? The councils that thrive in 2040 will not necessarily be those with the most sophisticated platforms. They will be the ones where frontline managers can access good information and act on it. That requires investment in people and process, not just infrastructure.
Legacy systems that were never designed to interoperate won’t do so under time pressure. Decisions about which platforms survive, which procurement routes are chosen, and what the data architecture of a new organisation looks like will shape what the council can and cannot do for a decade or more. “What does this mean for our digital capability in 2040?” should be a standing question, not an afterthought.
- Build workforce capability through the way work is designed, not just through training
The people who will be working across system boundaries, engaging communities on difficult trade-offs, and managing digital tools in 2040 are largely already in your organisation. Building their confidence and judgement now, through how work is structured and who is trusted with what, is one of the highest-value investments a council can make.
In an LGR context, knowledge loss can be structural. Not everything can be captured, but the relationships and knowledge that are genuinely irreplaceable are worth identifying early: the planning officer who knows which developer has been in conversation for three years, the environmental health lead who understands the informal arrangements with housing associations. Deliberate decisions about what to capture, what to transfer, and who to actively retain will matter long after vesting day.
- Actively manage the relationships that will not survive on autopilot
The relationships most likely to lapse quietly are with the voluntary sector, anchor institutions, parish and town councils, and the community networks that delivery depends on but that rarely appear on programme plans. These relationships are typically held by individuals. When those individuals leave, retire, or move into different roles, the relationships do not automatically transfer.
This is not a communications task but a relationship management task. It requires someone noticing when a relationship is at risk and taking deliberate action: introductions, handovers, continuity. Once the relationship is gone, rebuilding it takes far longer than maintaining it would have.
- Stop treating staff uncertainty as a communications problem
The instinct in times of transformation is to manage workforce anxiety through communications: regular updates, FAQs, town halls, assurances that decisions will be made as soon as possible. These are not useless. But they address the stated concern (what will happen to me?) without addressing the underlying one (do I trust that this organisation has my interests in mind?).
What actually helps staff confidence is not more information but evidence of fair process, visible leadership, and decisions being made and communicated promptly rather than held until everything is ready. People can tolerate uncertainty when they trust the people managing it. They struggle when they feel it is being managed around them.
This means being honest about what you do not know and consistency between what you say in all-staff updates and what you say in senior leadership conversations. And it means treating line managers, not change or project teams, as the primary relationship for most of your workforce.
The founding decisions are happening now
Some of the things that will determine what local government can do in 2040 are structural: the reorganisation map, the funding settlement, the direction of central government reform. Councils cannot control all of that.
But the data architecture, the operating model, the workforce capability, the community relationships, the culture of how uncertainty is managed: those are being shaped right now, in decisions that might not look like founding decisions but actually are.
The councils that will be in the strongest position in 2040 are not necessarily the ones with the best strategies. They are the ones that treated the decisions of the next eighteen months with the seriousness they deserved.
The question worth asking now is a simple one: which of the decisions your organisation is making this month will still be shaping what you can do in 2040?
If you want to think that through with us, contact us here.