It's rare I really disagree with you, Simon - and I have to constantly keep pinching myself here, because something is odd - either others are seeing something I don't see, or... I don't know.

It has always been wise to be sceptical of savings figures - even yours - just look at BCP! (And at 400k residents, I guess they'll escape being reorganised again?) - but those were anyway calculated before the post-COVID financial pressures on adult's and children's social care, and before the latest rounds of austerity reduced *capacity* and indeed capability still further. I have also never (honestly) made a business case for shared services which, on a financial level, saved more than business process re-engineering could save if applied to each individual authority.

Buckinghamshire’s move from five councils to one in 2020 reportedly cost around £18m–£20m in transition expenses. Somerset budgeted in the tens of millions for transition costs (estimates vary, but often quoted in the £15m–£25m range). Northamptonshire’s forced split was estimated at anywhere from £30m–£45m in total transitional costs, though the exact figures can be debated - and in all these cases, costs continue.

Even if each county-level transition were at the lower end of ~£15m–£20m (do we believe that?), that immediately places the total cost into about half a billion. Not accounting for the crazy market impact on consultancy and contingent labour. Actual totals will of course be higher if you factor in complex boundary disputes (who believes there won't be Judicial Review?), overlapping contracts, major ICT integration, and further redundancy costs.

But more than all of this, I simply find it non-credible that the broken, traumatised, morally injured, exhausted burned-out people I work with in local government, with ability to implement change stripped to a minimum, can be called upon to do this.

210 councils to cease to exist? One unitary for Lincs? Cumbria? Does *anyone* think it's a good idea to ask Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to try to make a go of it *again*?! Will nobody be complaining about the doing-out-of-existence of Kent and Essex in 50 years' time?

Maybe 200-250,000 public servants utterly destabilised? The final push to a generation of leaders - most importantly some of the long-serving with the knowledge within the services? Reallocating £20-25bn of contracted spend? And £25-35bn of debt? How much will the rebranding cost alone? How much will the accounting cost alone? How many of those councils have passed audit - to have even an accounting baseline, never mind people, assets, contract registers?

This will not help financial stability - quite the opposite.

Let's be clear - local government has been kept on life support by a series of special pleading and special funding, networks of LGA and related support, al of which have already emphasised the reality of central government control, and placed central government *departments* in the driving seat (always important to remember there is absolutely no coherence within central government, and always too little power to MHCLG). This move obviously underlines the absolute supremacy of central government and absolute contingency of local government in this country (thus sending a far louder message in the doing than in the explicit messages in the bill).

I mean, at least, I suspose, the White Paper has genuine 'ambition' - 'breathtaking' in the truest sense of the word. A coherent, rational, ever-more centralied state, in a country already one of the most centralised in the world. I have always been opposed to 'the national care service', but something which introduced that, coherent regional planning, transport (central government doesn't want transport! There isn't even a coherent transport strategy!), but then left some genuine local government in place in some supporting and community-building function would probably be preferable.

My sincere belief is that without investment of the best part of £1bn and massive political capital and focus, central government is at risk of creating total breakdown, and - 'you break it, you own it' finding itself holding the baby and taking accountability not just for the disaster but also for every 'local' decision going forwwards.