19th July 2025
Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) and Devolution is one of the biggest changes to how local government in England will be delivered in a generation. It is a significant undertaking for impacted councils that will cover every aspect of a local authority’s structures, processes, infrastructure and services.
But it also presents an opportunity for transformational change by leveraging technology and digital solutions to improve efficiency, enhance citizen services and future-proof operations. Council CIOs and IT and Digital Teams will have a lot to think about. Here are the 10 key areas for LGR digital focus:
Merging data, systems and processes across councils while ensuring data integrity and compliance with regulations will be complex. Understanding your processes before reorganisation, along with key data on your infrastructure and systems, makes integration a little easier to navigate.
Making sure your data is good quality will make it easier to take advantage of technologies such as AI. Centralised data repositories enable smarter analytics for resource allocation and understanding costs, especially when bringing together budgets from many different councils. Read more about data sharing principles.
Once Councils have good data they will be able to bring AI-powered insights for predicting community needs and optimising service delivery.
And of course, once reorganisation starts, enhanced data-sharing across departments to improve collaboration will be essential and much easier to achieve.
Managing vulnerabilities that arise during transitions and ensuring robust security policies will be essential. Zero-trust security models will safeguard citizen data.
IT estates that are littered with legacy applications are, by default, more at risk. This is because many of those applications are not built to modern standards and often have workarounds that open up vulnerabilities. Moving to modern, agile solutions will mitigate this risk.
It will be important to have standardised cybersecurity frameworks across newly combined local authorities. This will be supported by the activities in the first point in this list – understanding your data and processes is a precursor to understanding your risks.
It’s tempting to wait until reorganisation has happened to assess whether to modernise existing platforms or integrate them with new technologies. But this would be a big lost opportunity. And could potentially lead to headaches further down the line.
Mapping and understanding your application estate early in the process – technology and costs – will enable you to put together a plan for the consolidation of disparate systems into a single, interoperable framework.
And if you use the right tools – like low-code – then you will be able to provide better, more secure solutions but also save considerable costs from this consolidation.
Low-code enables rapid development of citizen-facing apps and portals with minimal coding, facilitates process automation without needing extensive IT expertise and allows councils to build custom solutions tailored to their specific needs.
And solutions like Citizen Hub, Netcall’s pre-built local government solution with council-specific applications, processes and integrations, can dramatically reduce the time and effort required to deliver joined-up services.
Integration of cloud-based platforms supports scalability, resilience and cost efficiency in a way that local government legacy applications just can’t. So rather than just bring together lots of legacy applications from transitioning councils, look to consolidate onto modern, cost-effective solutions. Read more about Cumberland Council’s approach to optimising digital efficiency.
Improving accessibility and efficiency of public services for citizens will be a big benefit for local government reorganisation. But the main priority is ensuring that they can access services from day one. This will need a lot of planning and the right solutions.
Citizen-centric Digital Services can be enabled by true omnichannel platforms for seamless citizen engagement (web, mobile, AI chatbots). Flexible and responsive self-service portals can enable faster access to council services and AI-driven citizen engagement can reduce backlogs and provide more tailored support from day one.
Bringing together services from multiple councils will require automation and process optimisation from day one, so the bulk of citizen enquiries can be dealt with without needing a human. This will free up the IT, digital and contact teams to spend more time on ironing out the inevitable issues that will arise during transition. RPA (Robotic Process Automation) can also help reduce the administrative workload.
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) can also help automate processes and save employee time and council costs. Automation will massively help to maintain service continuity amid organisational transitions.
Upskilling employees to adopt digital solutions and ensure smooth transitions will be essential so it is vital that an investment in upskilling employees with digital capabilities is part of the early plans.
Digital leadership programs are a key signifier of the importance of digital skills. Getting senior leaders – both officers and members – to visibly take part and drive digital leadership programs will be key in setting the right tone.
Having access to the right systems will also make it easier for employees to deliver the best services. Again, legacy applications often provide poor experiences and can lead to staff demotivation as they can often hinder rather than help.
And giving councils tools that give them the ability to build their own solutions and take control of their own digital destiny means you are less reliant on expensive external resources and better able to train up and retain your own talent.
Adhering to national policies like the GDPR while ensuring operational transparency should be top of mind before, during and after the transition.
Having modern applications that enable technical governance to be managed easily will support this. Bringing together lots of applications and data – with existing user access and permissions – will be a big task. Learn more about the data sharing governance framework.
Using well-designed and flexible SaaS solutions can help IT teams to get on top of managing governance and compliance.
Minimising costs while maximising efficiency through digital transformation is going to be an essential part of the transition to new arrangements. Whilst the view may be that economies of scale make this inevitable, it requires some thought. Calculate your estimated savings
We’ve already covered the importance of mapping processes to uncover insights about existing costs and opportunities to automate and improve. Once you have this information, you can identify how to use tools like RPA, low-code, AI and automation to build better digital services and save significant costs.
It’s also important to work with suppliers who have fair and transparent pricing. This is not always the case and some suppliers will probably use local government reorganisation as an excuse to raise costs or charge for additional services.
Solutions like Citizen Hub are based on a single licence fee that enables councils to build as many applications and have as many users as they want. So the ROI can be significant.
Ensuring that different council systems can communicate and work together effectively will be essential for service continuity on day one and beyond.
Netcall’s AppShare and Community – a marketplace of shareable, council-built applications and templates – enables over 140 councils to make use of applications, processes and integrations created by the wider community so they are already interoperable and standardised. This saves lots of time and effort – new solutions can be available in days and weeks rather than months and years.
Legacy applications are often incapable (or their vendors, unwilling, without great cost) of integrating with other solutions and services and struggle to meet core or national standards. So, it’s important to look for solutions that enable this.
Local government reorganisation is the perfect chance for councils to move towards cloud solutions that enhance flexibility and future-proof services.
The councils that are coming together should take the opportunity to identify their cloud transition roadmap early in the process. This will set the new council up on the right foundations and remove cyber risks, integration issues, cost challenges and implementation problems.
Finally, ensuring clear communication between all stakeholders should be an active part of transition.
This should obviously include elected members, partners, employees and citizens but it should also include vendors. They can help with all of the suggestions in this list and can bring innovating thinking from other customers that could short-cut some of the effort. And early engagement will ensure that plans are not only deliverable, but ambitious.
By leveraging RPA, low-code, automation and AI, CIOs and Chief Digital Officers can modernise operations, enhance service delivery, reduce costs and improve resilience before, during and after local government reorganisation.
Adopting these technologies strategically will not only ease transition challenges but also create a more adaptive and future-ready council.
Ready to take a proactive approach to reorganisation? Explore how Netcall’s Liberty Platform – including Citizen Hub, low-code, AI and AppShare – can help your council simplify, scale and serve better.
Local government reorganisation requires efficiency, collaboration, and strategic planning. Process mapping helps councils streamline services, eliminate duplication, and future-proof governance models. With Liberty Spark, councils can navigate change confidently, ensuring smooth transitions, improved outcomes, and sustainable modernisation for citizens
The term Agentic AI is gaining a lot of traction across many sectors. It’s time to cut through the noise, so this blog delves deeper into what agentic AI truly involves and looks at what this technology really means for your organisation.
A lack of quality data and insight into services is impacting how local authorities deliver outcomes to citizens. Discover how good and bad savings hinge on the long-term impact and sustainability of the savings measures.
Cumberland Council’s proactive digital transformation embracing low-code, streamlined telephony and automated workflows to optimise digital efficiency and sustainability, saving resources and enhancing services for residents.
AI in the public sector is transforming local government by streamlining workloads and enhancing services. It helps manage enquiries efficiently, detect risks, and automate tasks without replacing human workers. Proper integration ensures AI supports operations rather than becoming a superficial, trend-driven tool.
AI in the public sector is enhancing efficiency and citizen services while maintaining ethical responsibility. Liberty’s AI ensures fairness, transparency, and privacy, supporting human decision-making rather than replacing it. With responsible implementation, councils can harness AI’s potential while safeguarding vulnerable citizens and building trust through ethical digital transformation.
AI in the public sector is more than cost savings—it transforms lives, empowers staff, and improves citizen services. It enhances efficiency, reduces crises, boosts job satisfaction, and enables proactive solutions. Fast to implement, it reimagines public services for lasting community impact.
As local authorities try to achieve more with less, low-code is emerging as a quiet success story in the UK when it comes to public sector digital transformation. This blog dig deeper and look at three reasons why more councils are using low-code platforms for many applications rather than traditional IT purchasing.
South Hams District Council wanted to address bottlenecks by automating and improving elements of processes and workflows. The used Liberty RPA for faster more efficient working.
Keep up with regular news from Netcall – you’ll hear about cut-through process automation and communications solutions to help you achieve your business goals faster.
Explore how Netcall’s Liberty Platform – including Citizen Hub, low-code, AI and AppShare – can help your council simplify, scale and serve better.
