Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate his Department has made of the average cost to the public purse of local authority mergers in the last 12 months.

The three proposals for merging district councils, which the Department has been considering over the last 12 months, have been assessed as delivering annual savings ranging from £0.8 to £3.1 million with pay back periods for covering one off transition costs from 1 to 3 years.