1510
Fri Jul 2026

Why We Built a Dedicated LGR Service & Why It Goes Beyond Vesting Day

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Written by:
Harrison Russ,
Lead Consultant

Panoramic Associates was established in 2009 as a specialist recruiter for senior public sector professionals. Over 17 years, we’ve built an extensive network and a track record of placing high-calibre leaders across local government, housing, and the broader public sector.

For the past five years, our focus has sharpened around transformation – the people who lead organisational change, digital programmes, and service redesign. We know this community well. We place into it, we recruit from it, and we talk to the people in it every day.

How we get there

When the English Devolution and Local Government White Paper was published, the scale of what was coming became clear very quickly. This isn’t a restructure. It’s the most significant reorganisation of local government in a generation – affecting every county, district, and borough with a two-tier structure.

We didn’t wait for the first decisions to land. We spent months speaking to programme directors, chief executives, and transformation leads across confirmed and emerging LGR regions. We spoke to independent consultants who delivered the last round of unitarisation. We studied the programme structures being stood up, the commissioning sequences councils were following, and the common failure points from previous reorganisations.

What we heard was consistent:

  • The market for experienced LGR and transformation professionals is already tightening, with 20+ regions competing for the same small pool of people who’ve done this before or have the right expertise.

  • Councils that move early on programme architecture and governance are making faster progress than those waiting for certainty
  • The major consultancies are being found expensive and too off-the-shelf for what’s needed – every programme is different, and the structure has to be built around it
  • Most critically: too many councils are interpreting “safe and legal” as a holding pattern, when it could be a springboard for the transformation that follows

What we’ve built

Off the back of those conversations, we’ve developed a dedicated LGR service that connects councils with a network of senior independent associates – people who’ve delivered local government reorganisation, stood up cross-authority PMOs, designed target operating models, and led the transition from multiple organisations into functioning unitaries. This network, combined with our internal PMO and sister company, PRG Consulting, enables us to deliver LGR services on an outcome-based consultancy model.
This isn’t a staffing agency model. We work closely with a curated group of specialists and match them to the specific phase and challenge each council is facing:
  • Strategic advisory and critical friend support during programme mobilisation
  • Cross-council PMO design and governance architecture
  • Assurance, risk identification, and dependency mapping
  • Programme directors and workstream leads for delivery phases
  • Organisational design, workforce planning, and service transformation specialists

Why we think beyond vesting day

Here’s what most people aren’t talking about yet: reorganisation finishes at vesting day. But reform doesn’t.
Creating a new unitary authority is a legal and structural exercise. Making it work – harmonising services, redesigning operating models, realising the efficiency savings that justified the reorganisation in the first place – that’s a three-year transformation programme that starts the day after vesting.
The councils that arrive at vesting day with clean demand data, evidence-based target operating models, and a plan for rapid post-vesting transformation will realise benefits by 2031. The councils that treat vesting day as the finish line rather than the starting gun may face years of post-merger drift.
Our ambition is to support councils through the full arc – not just getting to vesting day safely, but ensuring the new authorities are designed to deliver better outcomes from day one.

What’s next

This bulletin is the first in a regular series. We’ll share what we’re seeing across LGR regions – market conditions, commissioning patterns, talent availability, and practical observations from conversations with programme leads across the country.
No pitch. No agenda. If something’s useful, use it. If you want to talk, the door’s open.

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