Leadership on three fronts: the pressure reshaping local government

In 1813, Napoleon is back in central Europe after the retreat from Russia. His army is smaller, the momentum has gone, and things that once felt straightforward are starting to slip. He's still winning some battles, but only just. Across Europe, pressure is building from different directions at once.

From the east, the Russians push forward. In Germany, former allies begin to peel away. In Spain, a campaign that never really felt central is still draining people and attention. He's stretched, reacting more than setting the pace, and trying to hold together something that is already starting to come apart.

Within a year, he abdicates.

It's a dramatic example, but the underlying point holds. Trying to lead effectively while being pulled in several directions at once is hard. Doing it for any sustained period is harder still.

That's where a lot of local government leaders find themselves now: fighting a war on three fronts.

Three pressures, happening all at once

Across the country, Chief Executives and senior teams are dealing with three big pressures at the same time. Local Government Reorganisation, devolution, and the day-to-day reality of keeping services running at a time of unprecedented political change, stretched finances and rising public expectations.

You don't need to dress it up much. There aren't enough senior people with enough time to do all of this well. In plenty of councils, that's already showing.

The difference this time is that everything is happening at once. These aren't tidy, step-by-step programmes. They overlap, depend on each other, and compete for the same attention. One decision in a reorganisation programme can ripple straight into service delivery or political relationships.

If this isn't planned deliberately, people fall into firefighting. Meetings multiply, decisions get pushed up to a small group at the centre, and the same individuals become the bottleneck for everything. That's when already stretched teams start to creak.

What this means for leadership and recruitment

You can see the effect in the jobs market. Councils aren't just asking more of leaders. They're looking for slightly different people. Experience of transformation, the ability to work across systems, and confidence operating in a political environment are all in higher demand.

Interims can help with that. Used well, they give breathing space and bring in skills that aren't there internally. But that only works if there's some discipline around how they're used.

If roles are unclear, or if interims are brought in without a clear view of where decisions sit, it usually makes things worse. You end up with more moving parts, more conversations to coordinate, and less clarity about who is actually accountable for what.

Adding people on its own doesn't fix the problem.

Councils that have handled large-scale change reasonably well tend to be quite deliberate about this. They're clear on who owns what, how external support plugs in, and what they're trying to build longer term rather than just getting through the next few months. Cumbria's reorganisation is often cited as an example of this. The basics were clear: roles, decision points, and how internal and external capacity worked together.

Designing for the pressure, not reacting to it

There's also a more structural question. A lot of leadership models weren't designed for this level of sustained, overlapping change.

Trying to run everything through a small senior team doesn't hold for long. It risks weakening both the transformation work and the day job.

What tends to work better is spreading responsibility in a more intentional way. Dedicated programme leadership, clearer accountability below the top team, and some capacity that is properly ring-fenced rather than constantly pulled back into operational issues.

For Chief Executives, the reality is that they're juggling three jobs at once. They're expected to lead the organisation internally, operate across wider systems and partnerships, and manage political relationships. Each of those takes time and attention in different ways.

Expecting all of that to sit with one small group, without changing how leadership is organised around them, isn't realistic.

The places coping best with this aren't necessarily the ones with the most resource. They're the ones that have been honest about the pressure and designed around it. They've made clear choices about what sits where, who leads what, and where they need extra support.

That's why recruitment and retention matters so much in this context. It's not a side issue. Getting the right people in the right roles, whether permanently or on an interim basis, is a big part of how councils navigate this period.

Piling more pressure onto a small group at the centre doesn't work. Spreading the load properly, and being clear about priorities, does.

The risk in any period like this is that leadership models end up being shaped by pressure rather than design. Decisions get made reactively, structures evolve by accident, and capacity is used wherever the latest problem appears.

Some councils will drift into that. Others will take a more deliberate route.

The ones that do tend to be clearer about what leadership is for, where it's needed most, and how to support it over time. That doesn't remove the pressure, but it does make it manageable.

What we're hearing from the sector

his piece reflects what we're seeing and hearing through our work with senior leaders across local government. But individual experience varies enormously — by area, by structure, by how far down the road to reorganisation any given council is.

That's why we're running our 2026 LGR and Devolution Survey: to build a clearer, evidence-based picture of how leaders are genuinely experiencing this period — the pressures, the opportunities, and what it means for careers and organisations.

Last year, the findings were striking. Sixty-one per cent of senior officers told us they had changed their career plans as a direct result of LGR and devolution. Nearly half saw the reforms as an opportunity to progress. A quarter were already actively looking for their next role. Read the full 2025 report here. 

This year, we want to understand how the picture is evolving. If you're leading through this right now, we'd value your perspective.

Take part in the survey here →

It takes a few minutes, it's completely confidential, and everyone who takes part will receive the full report first, ahead of its wider publication in September.

This piece was first published in The MJ on 25th June 2026.