FOI003628 FOI Finance

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide the following:

For each of the financial years 2024/25, 2025/26, and 2026/27 (2026/27 to run from 1 April 2026 to 7 September 2026, the date the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) review was announced), please provide:

•    The total amount spent by the council on preparation for the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR)
o    Including, but not exclusive to spending external consultants, advisers, and/or law firms engaged specifically in relation to LGR, as recorded in the council's financial ledger/accounts system.

Please provide this as a single total figure per financial year.

If the council holds this information under a specific budget or cost code relating to LGR, please provide the figure recorded against that code. If not, please provide your best readily available total on LGR-related work.

For 2026/27, if your finance system cannot  isolate spend to 7 September 2026, please instead provide the total for the nearest full reporting period you can readily extract (for example, Q1 2026/27, or April–August 2026), and state which period the figure covers.