Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what her planned timetable is for unitarisation in areas where local elections were not postponed from May 2025.

The government will work with these areas to hold elections for new unitary councils as soon as possible as is the usual arrangement in the process of local government reorganisation. The exact timings and detail will depend on the proposals received and the decision taken on which proposal, if any, to implement. We anticipate that, subject to many external factors, there could be elections to ‘shadow’ unitary councils in May 2027, ahead of “go live” of new councils on 1 April 2028.