On 17 December 2025, the Local Government Association (LGA) hosted a session designed to help councils to manage their assets safely and effectively through local government reorganisation. As councils await their LGR decisions, now is the time for councils to prioritise and plan their asset management.
The session was chaired by Ellen Vernon, assistant director for place programmes at the LGA. The webinar featured keynote presentations from Mike Harries, senior partnerships manager in the One Public Estate team at the LGA and former chief executive at Dorset County Council up until its dissolution in April 2019. Following this, delegates heard from Simon Bowers, assistant director assets and environment at West Northamptonshire Council.
Reflections and tips from LGR in Dorset Council
Speaker: Mike Harries, Senior Partnerships Manager, One Public Estate, LGA and former Chief Executive at Dorset County Council
Mike provided the context that from an assets perspective, Dorset started in strong position when embarking on its LGR Journey. They were able to plan for aggregation, disaggregation and transfer of assets, aided by their:
- Shared understanding of Dorset’s property through a joint asset management board led by one of the district council chief executives, which had been in place for several years prior to LGR.
- A shared geographic information system (with a layer showing the assets for all of the councils and public bodies in the area).
Mike reflected that in Dorset, they were able to successfully collate their core property data and understand it well. Key data included the type, location, function, and legal interest in each property.
With the knowledge he has now from Dorset and subsequently, Mike reflected that:
- They would have benefited from a better understanding of the condition, capacity, utilisation of each property, as well as its compliance data across all councils.
- Collating sufficiency and suitability information held by the upper tier councils (on their education portfolios) turned out not to be relevant to other councils as they had no common basis for collecting it.
- Councils approaching LGR should, where possible, plan their workforce strategy to avoid a loss of corporate memory through key staff turnover.
- People collating asset data should make an effort to understand the background to predecessor councils’ asset strategies, to aid any further negotiations.
Finally, Mike encouraged people to consider the likely geography for new councils and the location of assets that were crucial to operations. For example, in Dorset, a key waste facility fell in the area of the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) council. Dorset couldn’t run a waste service effectively without it. The proposed solution was that the freehold of the facility would be transferred by default to BCP on vesting day, but with a leasehold interest back to Dorset Council to continue operations.
LGA advice on asset management between submission and decision
Speaker: Mike Harries, Senior Partnerships Manager, One Public Estate, LGA and former Chief Executive at Dorset County Council
Mike advised councils awaiting their final footprint decisions to focus on improving their data quality about their assets. He suggested that they ask themselves the following questions:
- Do you know what assets you have?
- Do you know what each council has and what you have collectively?
- Which asset management systems does each council use?
- What are the key dates coming up in terms of renewal of licences and contracts?
Mike’s other top tips for the pre-decision period included:
- Ensure that you have a clean data set. The core data must include location, type, and function of all assets. If you have time, you should capture the cost to run and the value of all assets, as well as information about the condition, capacity, utilisation and compliance data.
- Understand which assets are critical to current operations and where they are geographically (eg. Might they fall on the other side of a new boundary following a footprint decision).
- Understand which asset management systems are in place in which council. Some councils will have a formal asset register or GIS, whereas others may be working with spreadsheets.
- Remember that asset data exists in various forms and will not only be in estates databases – it will also be in planning systems, gazetteers and other formats.
- Record the soft intel about activities and negotiations! This information is often not captured on paper but is crucial as vesting day approaches and staff changes take place.
Mike then moved on to discussing actions that councils should be doing between receiving their final decisions and vesting day:
- Focus on the logistics of day one, including the operational plan for all locations. Ensure that there is someone there on the day to open the buildings and that there is new signage (if this is a council priority), for example.
- Although new governance structures will be in development, repairs and building maintenance still needs to continue. Ensure you get a clear steer on which programmes should continue in the shadow period and what (if anything) should stop.
- Compile all existing asset strategies from predecessor councils to discover alignment, conflicts, and risks.
- Take time to make thought-out decisions. There will be competing time pressures and aspirations, but a longer-term strategy beyond day one needs to motivate your work.
Mike reminded colleagues that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will issue statutory provisions to provide for the transition. These will include:
- Structural Changes Order(s) which will give the new council the right to decide on specific agreements being entered into by predecessor councils.
- A Section 24 Direction which will give the new authority a specific role in the decision making of predecessor councils, most commonly relating to disposal of assets over £100,000 in value, new capital contracts over £1,000,000, and new revenue contracts over £100,000.
To prepare for this, Mike suggested that asset managers work closely with their chief financial officers to develop a common approach to the capital programme delivery and to ensure the capacity to keep this running through the transition period.
Mike closed his presentation with a few final tips:
- exercise sound judgement and principles during the transition period
- avoid prioritising legacy projects of the predecessor councils which would not have been prioritised under normal circumstances
- be cautious of selling assets which provide short-term capital relief but would have saved (or produced) revenue in the long term
- some properties can be reused for different purposes. Consider whether this applies to any of your assets.
Insights from the West Northamptonshire Council
Speaker: Simon Bowers, Assistant Director, Assets and Environment, West Northamptonshire Council
Simon began by providing the context that Northamptonshire’s LGR journey was triggered by the financial emergency faced there. The timeline was as follows:
- May 2018: Max Caller’s best value investigation report recommended reorganisation of the Northamptonshire County Council and seven district councils into two unitary councils
- same month: MHCLG issued an invitation for reorganisation, effectively limiting options to two unitary councils
- August 2018: Business case submitted
- November 2018: MHCLG started consultation on proposals
- February 2020: Structural change order made
- April 2021: Vesting Day (delayed by COVID-19 from April 2020).
The LGR implementation programme was led by the eight chief executives, who each led one or more of the workstreams within the transformation programme. Thearsa Grant, who had been appointed to turn around the County Council, was appointed by MHCLG to lead the programme overall. A transformation team provided practical support for the programme.
Like Mike, Simon encouraged colleagues to register their assets and improve their data quality early on. He reminded colleagues that under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 and related regulations it was essential to make local agreements on assets, contracts and liabilities. Failure to agree early creates legal uncertainty and operational risk.
He gave the following advice about data management:
- Understand what you will own and on what basis. Agreements will also need to cover lease property and associated property, not just owned property.
- Agree on a common platform for property data early on. This is a neutral act and does not depend too much on the outcome of footprint decisions. Cloud hosting ensures resilience to IT outages. In Northamptonshire they use Concerto, but other systems exist.
Simon offered his key learnings from LGR in Northamptonshire:
- Critical roles such as the assets director should be filled well in advance to allow proper planning and execution.
- Invest time early into understanding the reorganisation regulations which affect assets as these are complex. Not understanding these properly hampers progress in the long run.
- Get Section 16 agreements in place well before vesting day. Address long-term liabilities such as PFIs as these contracts require clarity on ownership and make sure this process is documented. Undocumented agreements can lead to legal challenges down the line.
- Ensure these agreements cover all property, including both immovable assets (land and buildings) and movable assets like computers.
- Avoid last-minute deals intended to secure the legacy of predecessor councils unless they are robust and agreed by the incoming authority.
Simon also discussed that in Northamptonshire, they transferred some assets and rights to parish and town councils prior to vesting day, to ensure service continuity. For example, Daventry Town Council received a package of assets a year in advance of vesting day, including the town recreation ground, street furniture, bins, and non-highway street lighting. By bundling these together, the transfer was comprehensive and avoided piecemeal negotiations. The transfer also included legal rights and responsibilities, such as those for markets and closed churchyards
Whilst this was not done in Northamptonshire, Simon reminded people that it was possible to make asset and service transfers in orders setting up parish councils or in reorganisation orders, which can be more effective.
Question and answer highlights
Resources
- The slides, webinar recording, and FAQs will be available on the LGR & Devo Hub.
- Stay tuned for upcoming webinar sessions on LGR and devolution.
- Sign up for the Devolution and LGR bulletin to stay updated.