Final Proposal for Local Government Reorganisation in Norfolk

The Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution has invited Norfolk’s councils to submit a Final Proposal for Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) in Norfolk by 26 September 2025.

Broadland District Council, Breckland District Council, The Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, North Norfolk District Council and Norwich City Council have prepared a Final Proposal (appended as Annexes 1 and 2 to the attached report) for a three-unitary model for LGR in Norfolk.

The report summarises the key milestones and development work to date, the current position and next steps. The Final Proposal has been developed collaboratively, under the oversight of the respective Leaders and Chief Executives and in line with the Government’s guidance.

The decision as to submission of a Final Proposal on behalf of Great Yarmouth Borough Council is a decision of the Executive. The Leader has chosen to make the decision himself having regard to all the information available, based on the attached report. Council’s role has been to consider the attached report as a consultee making a non-binding recommendation to the Leader.

The leader has:

1. Noted the content of the report and its annexes and has considered the decision of full Council.

2. Approved the Final Proposal for a three-unitary model for Local Government Reorganisation in Norfolk as set out in Annexes 1 and 2 to the attached report.

The Council could choose not to submit a proposal to central government. While this is a valid option—submissions are not a statutory requirement—it is important that the authority expresses a clear view.

The information both from the report produced by Deloitte in March and the conclusions put forward by Inner Circle in the attached report, considered other options. It became clear that the single county unitary model was the least favourable of the three options considered. It scored highest in only one of the six evaluation criteria—Criterion 2, which covers financial and demographic factors. Despite some potential trade-offs, the overall assessment concluded that the single county unitary model should be ruled out due to its consistently lower performance across most criteria. 

The differences between the two-unitary and three-unitary models were relatively minor in several areas, however, the three-unitary model emerged as the strongest overall when all criteria were considered together.

Based on this comprehensive evaluation, I have discounted both the single and two-unitary models in favour of the three-unitary arrangement, which offers the greatest potential to meet the county’s future governance objectives.