East Hampshire Council Merger Withdrawn by Government

East Hampshire District Council is no longer being abolished in 2028. The government withdrew its March decision on 7 September, and the council’s leader has called the whole exercise “one costly, chaotic car crash”.

The withdrawal came in a letter to council leaders from Jim McMahon, the local government minister. Hampshire is one of four areas where the decision has been pulled outright rather than paused.

What was going to happen

On 25 March 2026 the then Secretary of State, Steve Reed, chose the five unitary option for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. His decision letter would have abolished all 14 existing councils, including Hampshire County Council, and replaced them with four mainland unitaries plus the Isle of Wight.

East Hampshire was to be split in two.

• Most of the district, Petersfield included, would have joined Mid Hampshire Council with New Forest, Test Valley and Winchester.
• Three East Hampshire parishes would have gone the other way, into South East Hampshire Council with Fareham, Gosport, Havant and Portsmouth.

The district council names those three as Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield. Reed’s letter describes them only as “3 parishes from East Hampshire”.

The new councils were to start on 1 April 2028, with elections to them in May 2027 replacing the ordinary local polls. The letter confirmed at least £900,000 per new unitary in transition funding, which came to £3.6m for the four mainland Hampshire councils. A Structural Changes Order still had to clear Parliament, and never did.

What the minister’s letter actually says

McMahon’s letter withdraws the March decisions for four areas: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. It also opens a wider review, which he will lead himself.

The parts that matter locally:

• The Secretary of State has withdrawn the March decisions “following updated legal advice (for the avoidance of doubt no privilege is waived)”.
• The review also covers the 14 decisions taken in July 2026, plus Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and West Sussex, where no decision had been made.
• Councils are asked to stop implementation work on the July decisions, which McMahon says “reduces the risk of nugatory work”.
• Elections scheduled for May 2027 will now go ahead to existing council boundaries, rather than being replaced by elections to new authorities.
• The new East and West Surrey councils are unaffected, “because they are already established in law”.

The letter sets no date for the review to report. It says only that next steps will be “communicated early and clearly to the sector”.

What the council says

East Hampshire’s leader, Councillor Richard Millard, put out a statement the same day. He did not welcome the reprieve.

“What a colossal waste of tax payers’ money,” he said. “The Government’s approach to LGR has been one costly, chaotic car crash.”

He said the volume of work involved in unifying services across Hampshire had been “absolutely astronomical”, and that he had said on the day of the March decision that the chosen option “was not right for Hampshire”. He is now pushing for compensation for what the council spent.

“They have ploughed their own furrow, but it is the people of Hampshire that will reap the bitter harvest of this costly fiasco,” he said.

The council has not published a figure for what reorganisation work has cost it.

What it means for you

Nothing changes about who empties your bin, sets your council tax or decides a planning application. East Hampshire District Council and Hampshire County Council both continue, and so does Petersfield Town Council.

What has changed is the horizon.

• The 1 April 2028 abolition date is gone, and no replacement date exists.
• Any election held in May 2027 will use today’s wards, not new unitary boundaries.
• The three-way split of East Hampshire is off, so Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield are not being moved into a Portsmouth-facing authority.
• The £3.6m transition funding for Hampshire’s four new councils was tied to a decision that no longer stands.

If you have seen a council document or webpage this year stating that East Hampshire District Council ends in 2028, treat it as out of date. The council’s own types of elections page was already behind events before this, still listing a Hampshire County Council election “scheduled for Thursday 7 May 2026”.

Our own planning news page referred to the 2028 merger and has been corrected.

Related

• Petersfield council tax bands: who charges what, and why the town’s band D is the highest of East Hampshire’s 40 parishes.
• Petersfield planning news: the South Downs National Park Authority, not the district council, decides applications in the town.
• Petersfield bin collection days, run by East Hampshire District Council.

Sources

• Local government reorganisation: programme review and decisions withdrawal letter to council leaders, Jim McMahon MP, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 7 September 2026, for the withdrawal, the four affected areas, the review, the instruction to cease implementation work and the May 2027 election position.
• Letter to Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton leaders (PDF), Rt Hon Steve Reed MP, 25 March 2026, for the four new mainland councils, the split of East Hampshire, the Structural Changes Order and the £900,000 per council and £3.6m transition funding figures.
• EHDC Leader slams Government as LGR put on pause, East Hampshire District Council, 7 September 2026, for Cllr Richard Millard’s quotes and for naming Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield as the three parishes.
• East Hampshire District Council, types of elections for the council’s 43 councillors and 31 wards, and for the out-of-date county election date.