Released: Wednesday 13 May 2026
The Government has launched a further consultation on local government reorganisation in West Sussex.
This consultation is to gather views on the Government’s proposal to modify the two unitary proposals put forward by West Sussex councils in September 2025.
The original proposal developed within West Sussex for local government reorganisation saw councils across the county work together to identify the best options to deliver council services for residents.
The detailed analysis identified two options that all councils considered met the Government’s criteria and are financially sustainable:
- one council on the West Sussex geography and
- two councils, one made up of Arun, Adur, Chichester and Worthing and the other Crawley, Horsham and Mid Sussex.
Rather than choose to implement one of the two locally developed and financially sustainable options, in March ministers instead decided to consult on a modified version of the two unitary option, proposing to remove Chichester from the option which included, Arun, Adur and Worthing Councils and put it into a unitary council with Crawley, Mid-Sussex, and Horsham.
The Government has not included the evidence in the consultation as to why it feels a modification was necessary to the one submitted by the West Sussex councils in their business case submission in September 2025.
We will now need to carefully consider the modification based on the Government’s published criteria, and to revisit the analysis previously undertaken on behalf of all West Sussex councils.
We await the conclusion of this work and expect to include this in our submission to the latest consultation.
We would urge any interested party to take part in the consultation by the final deadline of 15 June 2026, as it provides an opportunity for West Sussex residents, businesses and community organisations to have their say.
Take part in the government’s consultation
Future of local government in Sussex – more on local government reorganisation and devolution
