Southend council's net bill for the abandoned council merger reached £239,346 by 31 August, a new report shows. Consultants took £254,126 of the gross cost.

Southend council spent a net £239,346 on local government reorganisation before the government halted it, a report to councillors shows. That covers the plan to replace every council in Greater Essex with five new ones, and the first months of getting ready for it.

The figure is not the final bill. The report says costs for the wider Greater Essex programme are not finalised, and “there will be additional costs for Southend”. It also leaves out the time of council staff who were not working on the project full time, because the council does not record it.

The report goes to the Policy and Resources Scrutiny Committee on Thursday 8 October (council report).

Where the money went

The bill comes in two parts.

Drafting and promoting the five-council plan cost a net £181,394.62. Southend helped write the proposal. Before money came back from elsewhere, it spent £388,849.53:

Item Cost
Consultants (PeopleToo, 31Ten, SCIE, Grant Thornton) £254,125.78
Programme manager (agency worker, four months) £66,906.00
Council staff working on the proposal £55,093.42
Printing the five-council proposal £7,896.00
Greater Essex leadership support (shared facilitation) £2,493.33
Proofreader £2,135.00
Social media promotion of the consultation £200.00
Total £388,849.53

Two sums came off that total:

  • £34,288 of government capacity funding. The government gave Greater Essex £514,318 to help draft the proposals, and each council received £34,288.
  • £173,166.91 reclaimed from the other Essex councils, for the costs that were shared, such as the consultants, the printing and the proofreading.
Bar chart of the gross cost of drafting the Greater Essex reorganisation proposal, by item: consultants £254,126, agency programme manager £66,906, council staff £55,093, printing £7,896, leadership facilitation £2,493, proofreader £2,135, social media £200. £207,455 came back from the government and other Essex councils.
Gross cost by item, before £207,455 was recovered from the government and other Essex councils. Chart by Southend Today.
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Getting ready to set up the new councils cost £57,951.50 to 31 August. That was £55,951.50 on staff and £2,000 on recruitment. September’s costs are “still to be confirmed”.

Southend hosted the shared programme office for south east Essex, covering Southend, Castle Point and Rochford. Four dedicated posts had been filled by 7 September. The report lists the shared roles as two programme and project management posts, a coordinator, and part-time technology and legal support.

The £900,000 that never arrived

The council meant to recover the programme office’s costs from transition funding. The government had committed £900,000 to each new unitary area, the report says. “To date, the transition support funding has not been received from Government.”

On 7 September the government withdrew its decision to create a new South East Essex Council from April 2028 (our report). Implementation work has been paused since then. The report says the staff involved were all on secondments or fixed-term posts, and that no teams were restructured as a direct result of reorganisation.

Six council projects stopped along the way

The report also shows how the merger reshaped the council’s own improvement plans. After the government’s provisional decision, every project in the council’s transformation programme was reviewed. The test was whether it would still be worth having if the council was abolished in 2028.

The result:

  • 29 projects accelerated, including customer contact channels, automation and AI, and workforce plans
  • 8 started, including digital strategy and income generation
  • 8 reviewed or redesigned, including the MySouthend customer system and the council’s estates strategy, because of the risk of building something the new council would replace
  • 6 stopped, including a single view of the customer, integrated neighbourhood working and a commercialisation review

With the merger on hold, the council now plans to “revisit the gateway review outcomes and consider whether any decisions should be reversed”.

What it means for you

  • The money is spent. About three quarters of the net bill, £181,394.62, went on the proposal itself. The rest went on preparation that has now stopped.
  • The figure will rise. Southend’s share of the Greater Essex programme costs has not been settled, and September’s spending is not yet counted.
  • You can watch councillors question it. The scrutiny committee meets at 6.30pm on Thursday 8 October at the Civic Centre. Full council also takes reorganisation as an urgent item on Wednesday 7 October (agenda), as we set out in what Wednesday’s council meeting will and will not decide.

The council’s budget position for this year is in our report on the 2026/27 overspend forecast.

Sources