Native council devolution: May it speed up the tempo of native authorities cloud adoption?
However with Whitehall pushing an area authorities devolution agenda, contemporary alternatives for native authorities to choose up the tempo of their cloud migration plans might emerge in consequence.
“Native authorities has traditionally lagged on cloud adoption, usually attributable to growing old infrastructure, complicated estates and risk-averse procurement,” says James Wickham, founder and director of IT transformation consultancy JPW Digital Providers, who has been supporting councils throughout the UK to modernise their IT infrastructure for greater than 20 years. “However the devolution agenda, mixed with the pattern in the direction of native authority mergers, might shift that dynamic.”
As detailed within the December 2024 English devolution whitepaper, the federal government needs to rationalise the variety of native councils in England by way of the abolishment of two-tier native authority setups.
This might lead to county councils merging with their district council counterparts to create “strategic authorities” whose mayors will likely be empowered to run their very own budgets and enormous parts of their native economies with out ministerial interference.
The whitepaper describes the transfer because the “largest switch of energy out of Westminster to England’s areas this century” and can deliver an finish to the “parent-child dynamic” that exists between central and native authorities entities, including: “We’ll reset the connection with native authorities to present the sector extra autonomy and put councils on the highway to restoration.”
Working to a price discount agenda
Doing extra with much less is a enterprise technique adopted by nearly all of native UK councils within the face of tight budgets and the ever-growing calls for of the residents they serve.
Based on the Native Authorities Affiliation (LGA), native council funds are “below pressure like by no means earlier than” as their budgets are being pressured by “spiking inflation, excessive vitality prices and improve to the Nationwide Dwelling Wage”.
The knock-on affect is that the price of delivering council companies has risen by £15bn between now and the 2021/2022 monetary 12 months, the LGA claims, including: “[That equates to] 27% [in] actual phrases lower in core spending energy since 2010, leaving council the resilience they should meet new challenges.
“Councils continuously work to guard their budgets, working with and studying from one another to share and remodel companies to make sure they will ship high-quality companies for residents, however there aren’t any easier financial savings to be discovered.”
The federal government’s devolution drive acknowledges this, with the English devolution whitepaper confirming {that a} shake-up of how native authorities are funded will type a part of the adjustments it’s in search of to introduce.
“We’ll present multi-year settlements, updating the way in which we offer funding to native authorities, finish micro-management and transfer to a significant partnership between central and native authorities,” the whitepaper continued. “We’ll rebuild native authority workforces and modernise how councils do enterprise.”
And that is work that would stand to have a transformational affect on how native councils function, in addition to their IT funding methods, says Wickham: “In my expertise, giving native authorities better autonomy over budgets and repair fashions usually unlocks a extra strategic view of IT funding.
“When that autonomy features a clear digital remit, we see extra urge for food for cloud and platform-based supply – not simply as a cost-saving measure, however to genuinely reimagine how companies are delivered.”
Progressing the devolution
A number of months after the whitepaper’s publication, the federal government introduced in early February 2025 that 19 councils had joined its Devolution Precedence Programme to create strategic authorities spanning six areas.
These areas embrace Cumbria, Cheshire and Warrington, Larger Essex, Hampshire and Solent, Norfolk and Suffolk, in addition to Sussex and Brighton. This implies all six of those areas are heading in the right direction to turn out to be mayor-led strategic authorities by Might 2026.
On the identical day, the federal government confirmed laws had handed, paving the way in which for 2 new mayoral authorities to be shaped in Larger Lincolnshire and Hull, and East Yorkshire. In addition to the formation of mixed county authorities in Devon and Torbay, and Lancashire.
Talking to Laptop Weekly, Gavin Sneddon, principal analyst for native authorities at IT market watcher GlobalData, says all this consolidation might assist to supply a extra correct image of cloud adoption tendencies in native authorities.
“The devolution course of would require a assessment and consolidation of the related technological stacks which might have vital implications for future cloud adoption,” he says. “I might even be utilizing [the devolution process] to get a better understanding of what the present digital property is throughout the entire native authorities.”
It’s because, as issues stand, it is vitally troublesome to get a whole and granular understanding of simply how a lot cloud use is occurring inside native authorities.
The primary supply of available public sector cloud spending information is the Digital Market portal, which tracks what public sector our bodies have spent procuring cloud by way of the G-Cloud framework settlement.
However that’s removed from the one framework that native authorities our bodies can procure cloud companies by way of. So, whereas The Digital Market is perhaps helpful to get a steer on extra basic cloud utilization tendencies within the public sector, its information shouldn’t be relied on in isolation to precisely assess how superior cloud adoption is in native authorities.
“It’s not an easy course of to measure exactly the present price of cloud adoption at native authorities stage,” provides Sneddon.
For instance, the Digital Market information states that native authorities cloud spend hit £160m throughout the 2020-2021 monetary 12 months, which is unfold throughout cloud internet hosting, software program and help companies. In the meantime, GlobalData’s personal figures suggests native authorities spent £163m on cloud internet hosting alone that very same monetary 12 months, highlighting how a lot native authorities spend is unaccounted for by way of G-Cloud.
It’s also price noting the native authorities phase within the Digital Market contains Transport for London’s cloud spend, which amounted to £12.7m, whereas Sneddon’s figures don’t.
“Native authorities spending on cloud internet hosting elevated exponentially – for all native authority varieties – from 2016/17 till 2021/22,” he says, with figures having elevated from £47m in 2016-2017 to £163m in 2021-2022, primarily based on GlobalData’s info. “It’s nearly tripled, so it’s clear that it’s not a case that nothing has been taking place in native authorities [or that] they’ve been dragging their ft whereas central authorities simply will get on with it.”
Over the identical interval, the quantity spent by native authorities our bodies on cloud-based purposes elevated from £2.5m in 2016-2017 to £8.5m in 2021-22.
What’s notable, continues Sneddon, is that the quantity spent on cloud internet hosting and cloud purposes for the 2023-2024 monetary 12 months has remained flat in comparison with the 2021-2022 figures.
“It’s attainable that native authorities has through the years harvested a lot of the low-hanging fruit from its cloud migrations and is now left with the tougher use circumstances, which is why spending is relatively flat,” he says.
Dominic Edwards, expertise technique lead at IT consultancy Slalom Consulting, works with native authorities on digital transformation initiatives. He says yhat, in his expertise, many authorities’ forays into cloud have targeted on “lifting and shifting” their electronic mail, doc administration and webhosting companies off-premise.
“Others have opted for hybrid fashions, retaining essential or legacy methods on-premise whereas deploying new companies in public or personal cloud environments,” he says. “A robust emphasis on citizen-facing companies has additionally formed many initiatives, with on-line portals now generally utilized in areas like planning purposes, social companies and waste administration.”
There’s additionally a rising motion inside native authorities in the direction of adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) buyer relationship administration and information analytics instruments to enhance citizen engagement and repair supply, he provides.
“Councils are more and more turning to cloud platforms for the strong capabilities they provide, from autoscaling and AI-enabled menace detection to geo-redundancy and safe information storage, all to make sure their companies stay safe and dependable within the face of evolving dangers,” says Edwards.
In his view, native authorities cloud adoption stays regular however uneven, with some embarking on much more complicated deployments than others: “Whereas some city councils, akin to a number of London boroughs and Manchester Metropolis Council, are properly superior of their cloud journeys, many smaller or rural councils are nonetheless at a comparatively early stage.”
However that image might be set to vary now the federal government’s devolution drive is underway, claims Sneddon, including: “Within the medium to long run, I believe there are going to be loads of alternatives [for new cloud spend] as a result of councils might want to consolidate.”
This might additionally result in a scenario the place councils a bit additional behind on cloud find yourself merging with different authorities who’re extra superior, he provides.
Within the meantime, although, Sneddon says it’s seemingly that spending on cloud companies in native authorities will stay flat for some time, given the federal government is concentrating on a Might 2026 completion date for the formation of the primary wave of its newly shaped strategic authorities.
“The district councils should not going to wish to spend something as a result of a lot of them received’t even make sure whether or not they’ll exist in a 12 months or two, in order that’s going to be a detrimental cross-wind,” says Sneddon.
Talking to Laptop Weekly, Kevin Millard, product supervisor of native authority-focused housing wants IT companies supplier Huume, can be of the view that the tempo of cloud adoption isn’t going to vary in a single day attributable to enterprise tradition elements.
“Councils don’t like change,” says Millard. “Not loads of organisations do, however councils appear to be on a barely totally different stage of threat averse. They clearly have loads of ranges of management and sign-off, which doesn’t all the time assist.”
The devolution agenda is successfully setting in movement a sequence of mergers in native authorities, and every of those particular person councils could have their very own methods of working and totally different ranges of paperwork, he says.
“You additionally get some councils which are fairly forward-thinking, whereas others don’t essentially wish to take a look at doing issues otherwise – or should not able to do issues otherwise. The quantity of employees they’ve can range dramatically too,” says Millard.
Huume was based six years in the past by director Paul King. It specialises within the provision of a SaaS property portal to native authorities and housing associations that permits these in want of social housing to search out lodging regionally that’s proper for them.
Each King and Millard beforehand labored at a housing wants IT companies supplier that obtained acquired by Civica. Of their time working with native authorities, they’ve seen the difficulties councils can face when merging into unitary authorities.
“You may get teams of councils which are geographically shut which are going to turn out to be one, however their particular person processes could be vastly totally different,” Millard says.
Smoothing out the variations between the separate entities being mixed to type one single council can take years. For instance, Millard cites the two-year transformation of Dorset Council right into a unitary authority, made up of practically half a dozen district councils, which concluded in 2019.
“We labored with Dorset Council, they usually had turn out to be a unitary after merging with a number of district councils, however all of these districts labored very otherwise, and it did take them some time to get to that time the place they’d a typical working course of,” he says.
“From the attitude of the work we do, it’s a case of making an attempt to choose up the nuances from every space, as a result of some may need a youthful inhabitants or a extra aged inhabitants, and populations change over time too. It’s fairly superb how totally different sure authorities could be from one space to the subsequent.”
Native authorities provider lock-in
The difficulty of provider lock-in is an actual problem in native authorities, King says. A few of this is because of councils having a low urge for food for making an attempt out new suppliers. Generally, although, it’s all the way down to legacy suppliers not being clear on how lengthy it’s going to take councils to exit their platforms.
“We come up very often in opposition to the place a council could have an present piece of software program in place that is perhaps coming as much as the top of its contract a 12 months’s time, for instance, they usually desire a change, however it simply takes so lengthy to do,” he says.
“Then they get too near the contract end-point that they’ve to increase for one more 12 months as a result of the prevailing suppliers received’t give them a three-month extension. It must be one other 12 months, after which the entire [discussion] course of simply will get reset. Some councils are additionally scuffling with the day-to-day and would not have the capability or price range to place a workforce collectively to guide a change undertaking.”
As soon as the federal government’s devolution drive has an opportunity to mattress in, and native authorities purchase better autonomy over the right way to use their budgets, it’s hoped that points akin to these will turn out to be a factor of the previous.
Past cloud, these adjustments might unlock different types of expertise spend and innovation, with the devolution whitepaper speaking about how the initiative might launch the “untapped” potential for innovation throughout the UK.
Luke Percy, authorities and healthcare sector supervisor at Conscia-owned digital transformation firm ITGL, agrees, telling Laptop Weekly the devolution of price range management to native councils represents a “vital alternative to unlock regional innovation” and ship companies regionally that higher serve communities.
“This decentralised strategy empowers councils to put money into scalable cloud infrastructure and good applied sciences that reply on to native priorities – be it enhancing digital entry in rural areas, supporting built-in well being and social care methods, or enhancing public security,” he says.
“Authorities help, alongside focused funding in digital abilities and infrastructure, is crucial to assist councils realise their digital methods, and we’re already working with a number of authorities [using] cloud platforms to modernise legacy methods and supply entry to safer, resilient and environment friendly companies.”
