Conferences, a fabulous chance to acquire notepads and pens, however two weeks ago I found myself pleading with a representative of a major consultancy business for a free plastic drinks bottle. “I’ll grab one for my son” I thought, expecting it to be a brief interaction. However, several minutes later there I was explaining that I did indeed deserve the thing despite not being a prospect for him, and it was for my little boy because he loses his frequently at school.
He reluctantly handed the item to me and my feelings on several of the big consultancies were reinforced once more. So now to make some kind of related connection to my venting…
Local government reform has always been about more than just structures and boundaries. It’s about technology and the invisible infrastructure that underpins how services are delivered, managed, and experienced by citizens. Because let’s face it, the process of consolidating technology platforms across multiple councils and authorities is going to be one of the thorniest and least visible challenges in reform.
A landscape of legacy and duplication
Smaller authorities are often operating core business systems that are outdated, unsupported, and in some cases dangerously fragile. Payroll systems running on legacy software, housing systems that are decades old, and finance platforms patched together with bespoke code.
Add to this duplication, because it’s not unusual to find multiple systems attempting to fulfil the same function; such as two HR platforms, several CRM systems, or different case management tools operating in silos. Each system has its own contracts, support needs, and data definitions, creating complexity, inefficiency, and cost. The prospect of merging or replacing them at scale across multiple organisations is already daunting and it’s barely beginning.
Where will the skills come from?
Even if the ambition is clear, there remains the question of talent and resources. The technology skills needed for the consolidation, such as system architects, data migration specialists, integration experts and cyber professionals, are scarce even in the private sector. Local government has historically struggled to recruit these roles, not least because salaries lag well behind market rates, and I’m not sure it’s going to get any easier.
The tightening of IR35 rules has further complicated matters because highly skilled contractors who might once have filled the gap are now reluctant to work on-payroll inside IR35 arrangements, particularly at day rates that don’t reflect the specialist expertise required. This has left councils competing in a market where supply is already short and demand is rapidly rising.
Managed services are not fit for the challenge?
Most councils rely on large recruitment managed service providers (to source talent. But these models were built around volume, generalist recruitment and not sourcing hard-to-find technology specialists. The result is a growing frustration because roles remain unfilled or are filled with underqualified candidates by generalists. Meanwhile, specialist SMEs who do have the expertise are often priced out by MSP frameworks that favour scale over capability.
The irony is stark, because the very models meant to simplify recruitment are in some cases making it harder to access the niche skills that will be needed to deliver reform successfully.
The risk of big consultancy dominance
This vacuum of skills creates fertile ground for the largest consultancy firms and, as an SME, a recruitment specialist, and a taxpayer, it’s this bit that makes me the most nervous. With deep benches of staff and the ability to mobilise quickly, they are often seen as the “safe” choice, but we all know that the costs can be eye-watering. My fear is that that these firms will hoover up the available talent, deploy it back into local government at a huge markup, and exploit the imbalance between supply and demand.
Reform, in this model, becomes not just complex but increasingly prohibitively expensive.
The opportunity for SME’s and councils
Yet there is another way, and not even another way, but at the very least a complimentary way. Specialist SMEs, whether in data migration, cloud architecture, or business systems integration, are often more agile and more cost-effective. By opening up procurement models to make it easier for SMEs to participate, councils can access high-quality expertise at a fraction of the cost of big consultancy.
This requires a mindset shift and open and engaging commercial teams, ones who will move away from blanket reliance on MSPs and large frameworks and instead create space for niche suppliers to both derive and deliver benefit. It also requires leaders in local government to be bold, to question whether “safe” procurement routes are actually delivering value, and to seek partnerships that combine deep expertise with affordability.
A call for smarter Reform
Technology consolidation in local government is not just a technical project; it is an organisational, cultural, and economic challenge and reconfiguration. As many people are (correctly in my opinion) saying, it’s the largest transformation in local government in a generation. But without the right skills, it risks stalling, overrunning, or becoming dominated by the largest consultancies at unsustainable costs. It’s a story we’ve seen countless times before in the NHS and central government.
The challenge is to rethink how local government accesses the talent and expertise it needs. That means addressing pay and conditions to attract scarce skills, revisiting procurement frameworks to unlock SME participation, and resisting the temptation to hand over the keys to the big four.
Reform done well could free councils from decades of legacy systems, duplication, and inefficiency. But done badly, it risks entrenching dependency, consuming scarce budgets, and delivering little real change.
They say, “nobody ever got fired for hiring KPMG” and, I guess, that’s my concern. An whilst nobody ever got fired for hiring them, if you do indeed work for KPMG, you clearly can get fired for giving out a plastic bottle without a guaranteed ROI.