Quick answer: On 7 September 2026 the Secretary of State announced in Parliament a review of Local Government Reorganisation following “updated and privileged” legal advice. Decisions on Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk have been withdrawn. Plans for 14 other areas, plus Cambridgeshire & Peterborough and West Sussex, are paused while the review runs. Surrey is unaffected — East and West Surrey go live in April 2027. May 2027 local elections will be held on existing boundaries. No end date has been given for the review.
What was announced
The press release, Review of local government reorganisation launched, was published on GOV.UK on 7 September 2026 following a statement to Parliament.
The stated reason is legal. Ministers received “updated and privileged legal advice”, and the Secretary of State, Angela Rayner, said she wanted “to satisfy myself firstly that the right process is in place, that it is robust, and of course complies with the law”. A second, separate test follows: whether the proposals “meet the priorities of a new administration and the new Prime Minister”.
So there are two questions in the review, and they are not the same question. One is procedural — was reorganisation done lawfully. The other is political — does the new government still want it in this form. Either could change the answer.
The practical effect breaks into three tiers:
- Withdrawn: Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk — the four Devolution Priority Programme areas. These decisions no longer stand.
- Paused: 14 other areas, plus Cambridgeshire & Peterborough and West Sussex where decisions had not yet been issued.
- Proceeding: Surrey. Councillors for the two new unitary authorities were elected in May, and East and West Surrey go live in April 2027.
The government has also confirmed that local elections in May 2027 will go ahead on existing council boundaries, and that a Rewiring the State White Paper on devolution will set out the longer-term plan.
The decision follows judicial reviews launched by councils in several affected areas in June.
Why this matters if you build houses
It would be easy to file this under local government politics and move on. It sits closer to a scheme than that.
Every reorganising area has a building control service and a planning department inside the reorganisation. A two-tier area moving to unitary means district building control teams merging, planning services amalgamating, staff deciding whether to stay. Three days after this announcement, MHCLG wrote to local authority chief executives about building control capacity and charging reform — a letter that explicitly welcomed early engagement on new delivery models “particularly in the context of local government reorganisation and wider public service reform”.
That letter assumed reorganisation was happening. Now, in 16 areas, nobody knows.
Uncertainty is worse for recruitment than either outcome. A building control manager in a district council that was told it would cease to exist in April 2028, and has now been told the decision is withdrawn or paused with no new date, is not in a good position to hire. Neither are the people they would be hiring. MHCLG’s own £55 million programme depends on authorities putting trainee Registered Building Inspectors through an LABC-employed secondment route — which requires an authority confident enough about its own future to say yes at senior level.
Against the backdrop of the planning department staffing gap that was already there, another year of structural limbo is not a neutral event.
And the timing collides with the busiest regulatory window in a decade. The Building Safety Levy starts on 1 October 2026, with MHCLG warning of a surge in initial notices and applications through September. Approved Document L 2026 takes effect on 24 March 2027, making all of 2027 a dual-standard year — plots with transitional protection checked against Part L 2021, plots without it checked against the new Part L and requirement L3. Approved Document F 2026 lands on the same day.
The teams doing that checking are, in 16 areas of England, now working inside an organisation whose future was reopened on 7 September.
What it does not change
Worth being precise, because uncertainty tends to expand to fill available space.
Your building control body has not changed. Initial notices and applications submitted to a district or borough council go to that council. Nothing about the review alters who has building control jurisdiction today.
Building regulations are unaffected. Part L, Part F, Part G, Part O and the 2027 commencement dates are set nationally. A paused reorganisation changes nothing about what a dwelling has to achieve.
The Building Safety Levy still starts on 1 October 2026. Local authorities with building control responsibility remain the collecting authorities for their areas, including where building control is carried out by a registered building control approver or the BSR.
Surrey proceeds. If you have sites in Surrey, the April 2027 vesting date for East and West Surrey stands.
What to do about it
If you have schemes in a withdrawn or paused area, don’t assume continuity of contact. Reorganisation programmes have already moved staff, merged teams and changed reporting lines in anticipation of vesting dates that may now not happen. Confirm who your case officer is and who covers them, rather than relying on a contact from six months ago.
Front-load the September and Q1 2027 submissions you were going to make anyway. This was already the right call because of the levy on 1 October and the Part L change on 24 March 2027. Organisational uncertainty in the receiving authority is one more reason not to leave an application until the deadline.
Make applications easy to check. It is the same conclusion as the charging reform letter, and it holds under every version of this. An application where the drawings, the specification, the SAP calculation, the U-values, the Ψ values and the ventilation strategy all agree with each other takes less officer time under any structure, in any authority, with any number of vacancies. An application where they don’t agree generates a query, and queries are where months go.
Watch for the review’s terms and timetable. No end date has been published. Jim McMahon, the minister for local government, devolution and regional growth, is leading it, and the Rewiring the State White Paper is the document to look for.
If you’d like the Part L and Part F evidence for a scheme checked for internal consistency before it reaches a building control body — whichever building control body that turns out to be — get in touch.
Sources: Review of local government reorganisation launched (MHCLG press release, GOV.UK, 7 September 2026) · Local Government Reorganisation (Hansard, House of Commons, 7 September 2026) · Planning news — 10 September 2026 (Planning Portal / The Planner) · Strengthening local building control capacity, capability and financial sustainability (MHCLG divisional letter, 10 September 2026)