 The Government's public consultation on Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) in Devon has now started and will run for seven weeks finishing on 26 March 2026.
In response to the invitation from government last year to submit ideas for LGR, a number of proposals were submitted from authorities in Devon.
In total, four proposals were submitted by Devon County Council, Plymouth City Council/ Exeter City Council, Torbay Council and a collaboration of seven District Councils.
The proposal submitted by the seven District Councils, which was commonly referred to as the 4-5-1 plan, includes a main case that would see the creation of two new authorities named Exeter and North Devon and Torbay and South Devon alongside Plymouth remaining on existing boundaries.
It also contained a modified option, supported by most of the seven authorities, to modestly expand the boundaries of Plymouth into four parishes currently in the South Hams area. This has commonly been referred to as the 4-5-1+ plan.
Reimagining Devon
The overarching proposal is branded as “Reimagining Devon” and was drafted as a single proposal. However, on the government website showing all LGR proposals which are to be consulted on, the “Reimagining Devon” branding does not appear on the website, and the government has split the proposal into two separate proposals. This potentially will cause some confusion so to clarify:
Main Case - Reimagining Devon proposal
On the government website, the “main case” Reimagining Devon proposal is the one described as:-
South Hams District Council, Teignbridge District Council and West Devon Borough Council proposed 3 unitary councils. These would comprise the current areas of:
- Exeter and Northern Devon Unitary: East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon, North Devon and Torridge
- Plymouth to remain unchanged
- Torbay and Southern Devon Unitary: South Hams, Teignbridge, Torbay and West Devon.
Modified version of Reimagining Devon
The modified version of Reimagining Devon with the option to expand the boundaries of Plymouth is the one described as:-
East Devon District Council, Mid Devon District Council, North Devon Council and Torridge District Council proposed 3 unitary councils. This includes a request to split existing district council areas between the proposed new councils. These would comprise the current areas of:
- Exeter and Northern Devon Unitary: East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon, North Devon, and Torridge
- Plymouth Expanded: parts of the parishes of Bickleigh, Briston, Shaugh Prior and Sparkwell from the neighbouring district of South Hams
- Torbay and Southern Devon Unitary: South Hams, Teignbridge, Torbay and West Devon
The government website includes links to all of the proposals and to a joint webpage. The main proposal and modified proposal are listed separately.
It is important to stress that all seven District Councils support the main case; it is just the way in which the government has decided to consult that does not make this clear.
All of the full proposal documents can be accessed on the governments consultation website, or alternatively the full documents have been published on the Reimagining Devon website.
Once the various proposals have been reviewed the consultation asks for responses to a series of questions on each proposal and again describes the Reimagining Devon proposal using the main and modified version wording as explained above.
In drawing up proposals, all councils were given guidelines to comply with by government. One of these was that each of the new authorities should serve a minimum of 500,000 population, although government did say that it would consider proposals that contained less than this if there was justification.
Our Teignbridge District Councillors were very concerned about the bigger authorities, just as we know our towns and parish councils have been, and LGR might result in local decision making being lost. It was for that reason that the Reimagining Devon proposal was drafted with the belief that this provides a balance between scale and local democracy.
While the consultation includes some technical questions aimed at gathering detailed information from key stakeholders, we would encourage everyone to take part, including residents, town and parish councils, businesses, and voluntary and community organisations.
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