In December 2024, the Government announced plans to reorganise local government across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, along with other parts of England.

Currently, local government services in Stoke-on-Trent are all delivered by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is a relatively small unitary council. Other parts of Staffordshire are served by both Staffordshire County Council and the local district or borough council, depending on the area. These are known as ‘two-tier’ areas as services and responsibilities are split between two levels of local government.

The Government plans to merge existing ‘two-tier’ and smaller unitary authorities to create fewer, larger unitary councils which will take responsibility for all local services, from social care and bins to planning and roads. It has said that having larger unitary councils will enable more powers, money and decision-making to be moved from central government to local areas – a process called ‘devolution’.

For the first phase of this process, councils have been asked to help shape what this new system should look like and submit their plans to the Government.

Once the LGR process has been completed, the Government will work with local areas to shape how the new councils will work together across larger areas, how they will be run and what powers and money they will receive.

Our proposal for LGR in Staffordshire

The city council submitted an initial plan in March for the creation of a new North Staffordshire unitary council, merging Stoke-on-Trent City Council with Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council.

The council suggested that a similar unitary authority should be created to cover the rest of Staffordshire. At the time, this idea was widely supported by most other councils in Staffordshire.

We believe this solution would work best for citizens, businesses and communities across North Staffordshire, strengthening existing connections between the three areas, boosting economic growth and achieving better value for money while also protecting the area’s unique local identity. We are now working to develop this into a more detailed proposal.

Click here to read the council's initial LGR proposal

An alternative suggestion was to keep Stoke-on-Trent as it is, but merge all of the other districts and boroughs into one large unitary council for the rest of Staffordshire. More recently, other ideas have been suggested by some councils, including creating more than one unitary council for Mid and South Staffordshire.