Case Study: Kent and Medway Local Government Reorganisation: Developing an approach to public service reform, community engagement and neighbourhood empowerment

Client: Kent and Medway area, including Kent County Council, Medway Council and the 12 district councils

Date: July 2025 – November 2025

Challenges faced by the client:

After the announcement of Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) by central government, Kent (including 2 unitary authorities and 12 district councils) were determined to work across partners and organisations to come up with a joint vision for LGR. The LGR reforms aimed at simplifying the two-tier council system into a single-tier unitary council structure represent a significant change to the functioning of local government in the Kent and Medway area.

This process involved collaborating across different political and leadership environments, determining individuals priorities and balancing them with the wider needs of the area.

Different councils needed to collaborate on goals, data sharing, risk management, and agreement on how to formulate different boundaries and teams. The councils also wanted to prioritise maintaining their current culture and connection to communities in their areas.

Our support:

Mutual Ventures and KPMG were commissioned as the delivery partner to all the councils and led on the writing of their business cases to articulate a future vision for LGR in the Kent and Medway area. In order to ensure that everyone’s views were fully represented, the councils determined that multiple business cases were needed with a large proportion of content aligned between the different business cases.

All the project sponsors from within the councils were aligned that through LGR they wanted to achieve strong community and neighbourhood delivery, as well as greater focus on prevention and public service reform.

Mutual Ventures worked across all business cases to articulate this vision and set out key goals and outcomes for the future to enable successful delivery.

The Mutual Ventures team included Professor Donna Hall and Mark Smith who shared their expertise on public service reform and the opportunities enabled through LGR.

Outcome achieved:

Mutual Ventures contributed towards the writing and publication of four different business cases, all of which were developed alongside the client and KPMG. These business cases are progressing through internal council decision making as a key part of the Kent and Medway area’s planning for LGR.