Angela Rayner has defended her decision to pause plans to redraw local council boundaries, saying she wanted to ensure they would survive legal challenge. The local government secretary also told the BBC she wanted to be “clear-eyed” about what the planned shake-up in 16 areas of England was likely to achieve. It comes after earlier this week she abandoned proposals in four other areas, in the face of legal threats from Reform and Conservative-led authorities. The surprise announcement on Monday has thrown the reorganisation plans into doubt, and drawn criticism from local leaders preparing for the changes.
Councils in affected areas have been drawing up proposals and consulting with residents since the reorganisation was announced in late 2024, in a process that is already thought to have cost millions of pounds. Speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast, Rayner conceded the decision to press pause had been “difficult” and she understood local authorities had put a “lot of time and effort” into their plans. But she added she wanted to have “all the information” about the proposals before going ahead with them, after her reappointment to her cabinet role under Andy Burnham, ten months after her resignation last year. “I got the legal advice and I hadn’t had the time to review and to go through all of that, and court cases were looming,” she told the podcast.
“If I’m making a decision that is highly likely to be in legal challenge, I want to make sure I’ve dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s,” she added. Rayner also said she wanted was “really clear-eyed on where we were going” with the plans, after Burnham had asked her to look again at the blueprints, which were announced by her predecessor Steve Reed. Plans for major overhaul of councils halted Council to take government to court over reforms In her announcement on Monday, Rayner said she was withdrawing plans to reorganise councils in Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Those proposals, announced in March, were already subject to legal challenges from Reform-led councils in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, and the Conservative-led administration in Hampshire, which were lodged over the summer.
She also said she wanted to review plans for 16 other areas, including 14 announced by Reed days before Burnham replaced Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister and reappointed her to her old role. Some councils affected by those plans, including Kent and Leicestershire, had threatened similar bids to challenge the lawfulness of the decision-making process. The government has argued that the plans, which will abolish remaining two-tier areas in England where county and district councils share responsibility for services, would make local government more effective and cost efficient. However, critics said the plans would not save money, while diverting resources from front-line services and leaving councils more remote from their communities.
Others have also complained that the reorganisation could stymie or delay parallel efforts to merge councils into regional authorities led by mayors, which Burnham has cited as a key part of his economic plans. Elsewhere in her interview, Rayner said Labour under Sir Keir should have been quicker to recognise a Palestinian state, having promised to do so as a “contribution to a renewed peace process” at the last election. Starmer took the move in September last year, having spent much of the prior year resisting pressure to do so from Labour MPs. “It’s always been Labour policy to recognise a Palestinian state, and it felt like we got there too late.
It was something that should have been really clear,” she said. She also denied that UK sanctions against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, announced on Tuesday, had been made to help Labour ahead of the forthcoming by-election in Holborn and St Pancras in central London. Settlements are illegal under international law, and there has been a rise in violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank by settlers in recent months. Pointing to the fact that Western allies had also announced sanctions, she said: “The French and the Canadians are not going to be like ‘oh well, we’ll just signal something to help you with a local by-election in London'”.
Reflecting on her return to government, she said a “big difference” between Burnham and his predecessor in Downing Street was his inclination to tell “the story of why we’re doing something” in government. She said both men shared “passion and the commitment” to deliver for Labour in office, but added: “Andy is probably more like me, in terms of [he] wears his heart on his sleeve”. The interview with Angela Rayner will be broadcast on BBC2 at 12:30 BST on Friday 11 September, and 17:30 BST on Saturday 12 September.
