Veritau can support with local government reorganisation
9 June 2025
We understand that managing local government reorganisation while maintaining regular services can be challenging for local authorities. Veritau can support with local government reorganisation (LGR), ensuring councils are well placed to deliver services effectively.
In 2023, as part of LGR, six of our existing member councils merged with two other district councils to form North Yorkshire Council. We supported this change in a number of ways, including:
- Developing new policies and processes
- Contributing to finance and IT related projects and workstreams
- Offering training, guidance, and advice
Read on to find out more about how we worked with North Yorkshire Council.
Support with Counter Fraud
The new North Yorkshire Council brought together eight local authorities, each with their own individual fraud risks and approaches to dealing with them.
We supported the new council to address fraud in a unified way to ensure that all council departments were protected from the threat of fraud. We also introduced a new counter fraud policy framework which was approved by the Council’s audit committee in December 2022. A new counter fraud strategy was launched which outlined how North Yorkshire Council would assess the risks of fraud and corruption that it faces, build its counter fraud arrangements, and tackle fraud when it occurs. This is supported by a new counter fraud and corruption policy, whistleblowing policy, and anti-money laundering policy.
Raising awareness of fraud issues with employees is an important measure in increasing fraud resilience. A tailored e-learning package designed to highlight key fraud risks to the newly forming authority was released to all staff in the eight North Yorkshire councils ahead of 1 April 2023 (Vesting Day). This targeted work was complimented through ongoing annual campaigns on cybersecurity awareness, anti-money laundering, whistleblowing, and how to raise fraud concerns.
Support with Information Governance
Our information governance team supported both the county council and district council clients in the run up to North Yorkshire’s local government reorganisation (LGR).
We worked with those councils to ensure that the new North Yorkshire Council would meet the transparency obligations set out in UK GDPR from vesting day on 1 April 2023.
The UK GDPR requires organisations to make certain information available to data subjects about how their personal data is being processed. This is achieved in the form of a privacy notice – a document which should be easily understood by the intended audience and written in plain English.
The team undertook a review of our district council clients’ existing privacy notices in 2022. This covered Ryedale, Selby, Richmondshire and Hambleton, and in total we reviewed approximately 120 separate documents. We liaised with each client’s individual services to establish whether any process changes had taken place which needed to be incorporated into the notices. This was to ensure they were up to date and reflective of their current processing activities. We also assessed whether any other changes could be made to enhance transparency for data subjects.
The newly reviewed privacy notices were then incorporated into a wider consistency review. We compared each district’s privacy notices to identify what information needed to be taken forward and included on an overarching notice for the service under North Yorkshire Council.
This resulted in a suite of new privacy notices being created for North Yorkshire Council, covering the newly incorporated district council functions, such as Planning, Revenues and Benefits, Housing and Licensing. Around 60 new privacy notices were produced for the Council and published on the website in time for vesting day.
Internal Audit and Risk Management
In the period prior to vesting day on 1 April 2023, we provided advice to managers in both the county council and district councils on the key financial and operational processes necessary to ensure the new North Yorkshire Council could launch successfully.
We prepared Financial Procedure Notes for inclusion in North Yorkshire Council’s new Constitution, together with guidance notes and financial schemes of delegation. We also prepared a new risk management policy and procedure, recognising that the Council needed to quickly establish effective governance arrangements and decision-making processes.
Internal audit testing continued up to vesting day to ensure key controls remained effective and assets were safeguarded but the work had to be carefully scheduled to avoid causing unnecessary disruption.
Find out more
We’re proud of the support we provided North Yorkshire Council and we’re confident in our ability help other local authorities with similar challenges.
To find out more about the support we can offer in relation to local government reorganisation, please contact us.
