Staffordshire County Council took six of the 12 seats on the body planning Stafford's replacement. Three days later the government paused the whole programme.
Update, 9 September 2026: this work has been stopped. Three days after these committees were announced, the government paused local government reorganisation and told council leaders to cease implementing the July decisions. Neither council has said whether the late-October meetings described below will now happen. See our report on the pause.
The committee that will plan the council replacing Stafford Borough Council now has a size and a shape. It will have 12 members. Half of them will come from Staffordshire County Council. The other half will be shared between six district and borough councils, Stafford among them.
Stafford Borough Council published the arrangement on 4 September. Two voluntary joint committees are being set up, one for each of the two unitary councils that were to replace the present ten in 2028. Ours is the South and Mid Staffordshire committee.
The council says the first meetings are expected in late October 2026. Full membership will be confirmed later, and each council appoints its own representatives over the coming weeks.
The maths of the South and Mid committee
The published split is:
- six members from Staffordshire County Council
- six members from the district and borough councils
Six district and borough councils sit inside the South and Mid Staffordshire area: Cannock Chase, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, South Staffordshire, Stafford and Tamworth. Six councils, six seats. The council has not said how those seats are allocated, but the numbers leave little room for more than one each.
Stafford is the largest of the six. Office for National Statistics mid-2025 estimates put the borough at 142,903 people, about a fifth of the 688,216 living across the whole future authority.
The north gets a different formula. The North Staffordshire committee has eight members: four from Stoke-on-Trent City Council, two from the county council and two from the district and borough councils there. Stoke, a single city council, holds half its committee outright.
Why it exists now, before it has to
Joint committees are a required part of the legal process for creating unitary councils. The councils have chosen to set these up early, on a voluntary basis, so that planning can start sooner.
Their job was to oversee planning for the new councils, running until shadow authorities were set up after the elections in May 2027. The shadow bodies would then take over until the new councils went live and Stafford Borough Council was abolished on 1 April 2028, the date now under review. We covered the naming and the 92 councillors when ministers set them in July: Stafford’s new council named.
Who is actually running the programme
The committees sit alongside an officer structure the government has appointed. It is worth knowing the names, because these are the people writing the plans the committees will be asked to approve.
| Role | Officer | Council |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Responsible Officer | Patrick Flaherty | Staffordshire County Council |
| Deputy SRO, North Staffordshire | Jon Rouse | Stoke-on-Trent City Council |
| Deputy SRO, South and Mid (shared) | Andy O’Brien | East Staffordshire Borough Council |
| Deputy SRO, South and Mid (shared) | Stephen Gabriel | Tamworth Borough Council |
| Assurance Deputy SRO | Simon Fletcher | Lichfield District Council |
Together they lead the Implementation Team, which is made up of the chief executives of all ten existing councils plus a programme director.
Neither of the two deputy senior responsible officers for our half of the county comes from Stafford. One is at East Staffordshire, the other at Tamworth, the smallest of the six at 81,392 people. The senior responsible officer is the chief executive of the county council, the body that disappears into both new authorities.
What the councils say
Councillor Martin Murray, chair of the Staffordshire Leaders Board, said the government’s decision means “we must now deliver a substantial programme of change within a challenging timescale”, and that the priority remains “protecting frontline services and delivering for residents throughout the transition”.
Councillor Jane Ashworth, vice chair, said: “This work is about making sure the transition to the new councils is carefully planned and well managed.”
The council is explicit that nothing changes for residents yet. Services “will continue to be delivered as normal while planning for the new unitary authorities takes place”, and the changes “will not affect the day-to-day services residents receive”.
What it means for you
Nothing on your doorstep changes this month. Stafford Borough Council still empties your bin, still sets your council tax bands, still runs planning and still charges for parking in Stafford. The 1 April 2028 handover date is now under review.
What was going to change is where decisions about the successor council get made. From late October that was to be a room of 12 people, and Stafford’s share of it is a single seat if the six district seats are split one apiece. The borough is a fifth of the new authority’s population and, on that reading, a twelfth of the committee planning it.
Two things are worth watching over the next few weeks:
- who Stafford Borough Council appoints. The council says representatives will be named over the coming weeks, ahead of the first meetings in late October.
- whether the meetings are held in public. The council has not said. A voluntary committee is not yet bound by the rules that apply to a statutory one.
Your next local election is in May 2027. Under the July decision it would have elected shadow councillors for South and Mid Staffordshire. Since the 7 September pause it is an ordinary borough election on existing ward boundaries.
Sources
- Voluntary joint committees established to help Staffordshire prepare for new councils, Stafford Borough Council, 4 September 2026, for the committee sizes and splits, the officer appointments, the quotes, the timetable and the service assurances.
- Local government reorganisation: programme review and decisions withdrawal letter to council leaders, MHCLG, 7 September 2026, for the instruction to cease implementation work and the May 2027 election position.
- Local government reorganisation: decision letter to Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent council leaders (PDF), Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 16 July 2026, for the decision and the May 2027 elections.
- Local government reorganisation: implementation letter to Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent chief executives (PDF), MHCLG, 20 July 2026, for the names of the two new councils, the councillor numbers and the role of the joint committees.
- Population estimates, local authority based by single year of age, Office for National Statistics via Nomis, mid-2025 estimates, for the population of each of the six council areas. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
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