The government has withdrawn the March decision that would have merged Basildon with Thurrock in 2028, after updated legal advice. May 2027 elections go ahead.

The plan to abolish Basildon Borough Council and merge the borough with Thurrock has been withdrawn by the government. The decision was taken after updated legal advice, and it undoes the announcement Basildon Council welcomed in March as the work of its own hand.

The withdrawal is set out in a letter from Jim McMahon OBE MP, Minister for Local Government, Devolution and Regional Growth, sent to council leaders on 7 September (letter to council leaders, 7 September 2026). It says the Secretary of State, “following updated legal advice (for the avoidance of doubt no privilege is waived)”, has withdrawn the decisions made in March for four areas:

  • Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock
  • Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton
  • Norfolk
  • Suffolk

Basildon sits in the first of those. The March decision put the borough into a new South West Essex council with Thurrock, one of five unitary authorities that would have replaced all 15 councils in Greater Essex from April 2028.

What the borough council said in March, and what it says now

Basildon Council did not merely accept that plan. It wrote it.

On 25 March, the council published a statement headed “Basildon welcomes green light for five unitary councils across Greater Essex”. The then Leader, Cllr Gavin Callaghan, said Basildon had “led the proposed model for five unitary authorities in Greater Essex, alongside nine other councils and a number of local MPs”, and called the council’s team “the architects of this model”. The statement said preparations would “now continue ahead of shadow elections in May 2027 and vesting day in April 2028” (Basildon Council, 25 March 2026).

The council’s statement on 7 September is signed by a different Leader. Basildon held borough elections on 7 May, and Cllr Andy Barnes now leads the council. He said:

“I welcome the Government’s decision to review these proposals. The proposed merger that would have seen Basildon and Thurrock included within a South West Essex authority area will no longer proceed as previously proposed, providing an opportunity to carefully consider the best future arrangements for local government in Essex.”

The same statement records that the council “recognises the significant amount of work that councils across Essex and other areas have invested in developing proposals” (Basildon Council, 7 September 2026).

Both statements are on the council’s own website, three pages apart in its news archive.

The elections, and the one Basildon had already voted for

The minister’s letter is specific about polls. It says that while the reorganisation timetable envisaged the local elections scheduled for May 2027 being replaced by elections to the new councils, “this review means elections scheduled to take place in May 2027 will go ahead to existing council boundaries”. Basildon Council calls that “certainty for residents, elected members and local authorities”.

There is a second election in this story that has had no attention at all.

At a special meeting on 20 March 2025, Basildon Borough Council voted to scrap elections by thirds and move to whole-council elections. Its published Section 35 notice states that “in May 2028, and every fourth year afterwards, electors in Basildon Borough Council will vote to elect all 42 councillors simultaneously”. The change needed a two-thirds majority of councillors voting. It followed a six-week consultation in which 62% of respondents were in favour and 38% against, and a 2023 recommendation from the Boundary Commission for England that the council move to all-out elections (Section 35 notice, Basildon Borough Council).

Under the withdrawn merger, the borough council would have ceased to exist in April 2028, the month before that first whole-council election was due to happen. The council legislated for a four-yearly election cycle starting in 2028, then agreed a plan that would have abolished it weeks earlier. With the March decision withdrawn and nothing announced to replace it, that May 2028 election is back in prospect, though the review could change it again.

What the review is, and what it is not

The letter is careful about scope, and the distinction matters.

  • The four March decisions, including Essex, are withdrawn outright. They no longer stand.
  • The 14 decisions taken in July are not withdrawn, but are being reviewed. Councils in those areas are asked “to cease work on implementing the decisions that were announced in July” until the review concludes.
  • Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and West Sussex, where no decision had been taken, will be considered as part of the review.
  • Surrey is out of it. The letter says the new councils for East Surrey and West Surrey “are unaffected and outside of this process because they are already established in law”.

McMahon will lead the review himself. He gives no date for it to report, writing only that he is “committing to you that I will ensure that next steps are communicated early and clearly to the sector”. He also says the pause will let the forthcoming Devolution White Paper “address the question of the role of local government in a devolved country”.

The trigger he names is political rather than procedural: comments by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons the previous week “that the government was prepared to look at decisions”. The Secretary of State, Angela Rayner, made an oral statement to Parliament the same afternoon.

Timeline of the Basildon and Thurrock merger decision: 20 March 2025 the council votes for whole-council elections from May 2028; 25 March 2026 the government confirms five Greater Essex unitary councils with Basildon merging with Thurrock; 7 May 2026 borough elections; 7 September 2026 the Secretary of State withdraws the March decision; May 2027 elections go ahead to existing boundaries; April 2028 the withdrawn vesting day; May 2028 the first whole-council election.
Every date here comes from the minister's letter, the council's own statements or its published Section 35 notice.
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The Thurrock debt question nobody has answered

One element of the March announcement has been left in the air.

In his March statement, Cllr Callaghan said the government had announced that day that it would “wipe a significant chunk of the historic unsupported debt from Thurrock Council in this financial year and provide further help and support over the next two financial years before the new councils officially form”. He added: “I was clear that Basildon taxpayers must not pay the price of historic failures in Thurrock and the Government agrees.”

That support was framed around new councils forming in April 2028. Those councils are not now forming. The minister’s letter says nothing about Thurrock’s debt, and neither does Basildon Council’s September statement. We have not found a published answer either way, so we are not going to guess at one. It is a fair question for the borough’s councillors to put.

What it means for you

  • Your council has not changed and is not about to. Basildon Borough Council still collects your bins, sets your council tax bands, runs the car parks and decides planning applications. Essex County Council still runs the roads, schools and social care. That split, which the merger would have ended, stays as it is.
  • If there is an election in your ward in May 2027, it happens on the boundaries you have now, not on the boundaries of a council that no longer exists on paper.
  • Nothing is settled. The decision is withdrawn, not replaced. A future decision could still merge Basildon with Thurrock, merge it with somewhere else, or leave it alone, and no date has been given for when that will be known.
  • Where to watch for the council’s next move. Basildon’s Local Government Reorganisation Scrutiny Committee is next due to meet on 1 October 2026, and its papers appear on the council’s committee site a few days beforehand (meeting page). The council also webcasts its meetings.

Sources

Every quotation above is taken from the minister’s letter or from Basildon Borough Council’s own published statements, read on 13 September 2026.