UTTLESFORD District Council Chief Executive, Peter Holt, has written to local Parish Councils to ask that they respond to the Essex County Council Unitary Authority Consultation before the deadline of 11th January 2026.

Read his letter below:

Dear District Councillors and Parish Councils

You’ll recall that we’ve previously advised that the Government is formally consulting on the four competing proposals for future alignments of new unitary councils for the whole of Essex, and that this consultation closes on 11th January 2026.  This has been debated at Uttlesford’s full Council meeting, and we arranged a well-attended online briefing for Parish Councils too.

Should any of you wish to respond individually or formally as Parish Councils, details of how to do so either online or in writing are on the Government’s website here.  Details of the four competing models are available here.

To assist you, we now attach Uttlesford District Council’s formal response, submitted today.  This follows the online format, in which we answer the Government’s nine questions in turn against each of the four different proposals, respectively for five, three, four and four (a different geographical alignment) new unitaries respectively.

Should any individual, group or Parish wish to respond, they can either do so online in the same format, or in a shorter letter to submit to the Government (by the same 11th January deadline) setting out how they feel in a simpler, shorter format.

For information, the Government has advised that they will use Artificial Intelligence to assist, by reading and summarising all the consultation responses.

It is entirely open to any councillor or to any Parish to respond in favour or against any of the different proposals, and of course you do not need to be bound by the formal Uttlesford District Council response, attached.  We hope however that it will be helpful in informing you of and explaining and evidencing the formal position taken by the district council, namely supporting the 5 unitary proposal as the best overall in terms of closeness to residents (being the smallest new Council proposed, at c325,000 population, compared to Uttlesford folding into a new council of closer to 600,000 under the 3 unitary proposal), financially sustainability, and best reflecting of existing and sensible economic and social geographies (built along the M11 corridor and Cambridge/London train line).

Because of the shortness of the consultation window and the holiday period, we have had to use our outside-meeting formal decision making processes to agree this submission by a Leader’s Executive Decision – though it does of course reflect the overwhelming majority position taken by our Council in several debates over the year.  Parishes would need to follow their own Constitutions in determining any response they make.

This Government consultation will shape the future of local government for perhaps the next 50+ years, so although timing is tight to respond, I am sure that you will want to not miss the opportunity to have your say.

Whichever way forward the Government chooses – and they have told us that their decision announcement is likely in March 2026 – we will all work together to make the best of wherever we find ourselves, as although our council believes that one of the proposals (ie for five new councils, each smaller than the competing three or four new council models) is manifestly better and more sustainable overall than the others, any of the four competing models can be made to work for local people.

Peter Holt
Chief Executive
Uttlesford District Council