Councils in Leicestershire are at odds over reorganisation plans, with a set of district and borough councils alongside Rutland County Council hitting out at Leicestershire County Council's proposal to create a single unitary authority for the whole county.

Rates for the Attorney General’s civil panel counsel are to be increased by 25% for all work carried out from 1 April 2025, the Treasury Solicitor has announced.

External auditors reporting on Birmingham City Council's implementation of its Oracle system have highlighted a culture where "either bad news was not welcome, or officers felt uncomfortable to communicate bad news".

The Welsh Government has published a governance handbook for members of national park authorities to help them make effective decisions.

The Government has agreed in principle to provide Exceptional Financial Support In the financial year 2025-26 to 30 councils who made a request for financial assistance "to handle pressures that they considered unmanageable and to enable them to set balanced budgets".

The City of Wolverhampton Council has partly credited the bump in Government funding for plans to cut the local authority’s savings target by almost half over the next two years.

Southampton City Council has said it can now balance its budget without taking Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) from the Government, although it hopes to use some unused EFS from 2024/25 to cover the costs of equal pay, transformation and restructuring.

The Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) has issued a wide-ranging report on electoral reform in the UK, containing some 57 recommendations, and warned that elections are being delivered in spite of “fragmented and outdated” legislation.

Wiltshire Council is to withdraw an appeal against a finding by an Employment Tribunal that an email sent by the local authority’s chief executive to union members ahead of a vote on industrial action was unlawful as it sought to deter union members from voting in favour of a strike.

More than half of councils that support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have warned they will become insolvent when the “statutory override” – a temporary accounting measure that keeps spending deficits relating to SEND off their main balance sheets – ends next year, a survey by the Local Government Association has found.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has launched consultations for the six areas selected for its Devolution Priority Programme.

Councils in England face a funding gap of more than £8 billion by 2028/29 without adequate funding, the Local Government Association has warned in its submission to the Treasury ahead of the Spending Review.