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First, the new authority will receive an as-yet-unspecified proportion of the combined funding allocations provided to the current authorities.

Allocations will not be recalculated until the multi-year settlement beginning in 2029-30, meaning the Devon Coast and Countryside Council’s initial funding will not fully take into account its particular service needs or service pressures.

Beyond that, it is unlikely the 2029-30 funding settlement will provide sufficient funds for rural and coastal authorities with modelling suggesting urban areas will be favoured under the new Fair Funding Formula.

The 39 county and unitary councils represented by the County Councils Network (CCN) receive less funding per head than inner and outer London boroughs, and metropolitan and non-CCN unitary authorities.

Home to school transport is the only element for which CCN councils are assessed to have greater needs, while the gap is particularly large for children's social care and highways maintenance. 

Devon's total Relative Needs Formula also looks set to be below the average for CCN authorities which, in turn, is significantly below the average for England as a whole. 

When the new urban authorities are created, it is likely that Devon Coast and Country will have among the lowest per capita allocations in the country, with limited potential to raise business rate revenue and, inevitably, high council tax rates.

Second, the reformed funding system only partly recognises the particular pressures that face rural and coastal communities. The introduction of a new remoteness adjustment, revised accessibility measures and greater use of population projections are all to be welcomed. However, the remoteness adjustment applies only to the adult social care formula and other indicators have been replaced or scaled back.

Issues that regularly impact coastal communities – such as responsibility for flood risk and erosion, and the difficulties of achieving economies of scale when coastlines disrupt and truncate catchment areas – are not recognised. For a county whose infrastructure is shaped by its coastline, this raises an important question: are the costs of being coastal sufficiently visible within national funding arrangements?

Third, the Devon Coast and Countryside Council will not begin operation with a clean bill of health when it comes to its financial position. Devon is still reeling from the abolition of the Rural Services Delivery Grant, worth £10.1 million, in the 2025-26 settlement and it received no additional allocation from the replacement Recovery Grant. Although it has received substantial support through the write-off of £180 million of historic high-needs education deficits, important questions remain about the treatment of future liabilities and the transition between existing and new authorities.

The timing is particularly significant. The statutory override allowing councils to hold Dedicated Schools Grant deficits outside their general funds expires in March 2028, a single month before the new councils come into existence. The new authority will need to manage organisational change while improving services already under significant pressure.

Finally, reorganisation may make some forms of disadvantage harder to see. When measured at a county level, Devon appears relatively prosperous. Surveys by property companies highlighting the high house prices in Salcombe, Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and other places would seem to back that up. But what they also do is conceal substantial disadvantage in particular communities.

Parts of North Devon are among the 10% most deprived areas in England. Torridge and West Devon experience very low workplace wages. Ilfracombe has some of the lowest life and healthy life expectancy levels in the United Kingdom.

In all of this, Devon is not an outlier and countless other rural and coastal communities across England are facing these types of challenges. But the reorganisation of local government, both historically and currently, has repeatedly produced tightly drawn, growth-focused urban unitary authorities with large swathes of rural and coastal communities seemingly bolted on for good measure.

We have seen examples of that in Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire and our concern is that the new proposals for Devon are a step in the same direction, rather than a blueprint that learns lessons from past mistakes.

Unless changes are made, the result will be an authority that faces significant service challenges with the lowest grant allocations in the country. And despite the noises coming from the new administration in Westminster, whether this is in the interests of social justice – and delivers real and lasting benefits for the communities and people the new council will serve – is highly debatable.