According to legislation.gov.uk, the Local Government (Structural and Boundary Changes) (Control of Disposals etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026 was made on 6 July 2026 and came into force on 7 July 2026. The instrument makes a focused amendment to the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, but the change is directly relevant to authorities being reorganised or dissolved under that Act. The Order substitutes the date in section 27(1) and section 27(3) from 31 December 2006 to 31 March 2025. In practical terms, that resets the date from which certain disposals and contracts are counted when statutory consent controls are applied.
The explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk says the amendment sits within the 2007 Act rules governing property disposals and contractual dealings by local authorities due to be dissolved under an order made under section 7 or section 10. Those provisions are used where structural or boundary change is being implemented and where control over significant transactions may be needed during transition. Section 24 of the 2007 Act allows the Secretary of State to direct a dissolving authority to obtain written consent before entering into contracts for the disposal of land, or for capital and non-capital purposes, where the consideration reaches specified values. Section 27 then sets out what must be taken into account when calculating that consideration.
Before this amendment, section 27 required authorities to include other relevant disposals of land and related capital or non-capital contracts made after 31 December 2006 when working out the consideration value of a proposed transaction. The 2026 Order replaces that historic reference with 31 March 2025. The legal effect is that the aggregation exercise now starts from a recent baseline rather than from a date almost two decades earlier. For authorities caught by section 24 directions, transactions before 31 March 2025 will no longer be part of the section 27 calculation, while transactions on or after that date may still need to be counted together.
The instrument does not amend the Secretary of State's underlying power to issue directions. It also does not change the categories of transaction covered by section 24, nor does it set new monetary thresholds on the face of this Order. What changes is the look-back period used to assess whether a proposed disposal or contract, when read together with other relevant transactions, reaches a level that triggers a consent requirement. That makes this a drafting change with immediate operational consequences for legal, finance and property teams handling reorganisation work.
For councils involved in structural change, the immediate task is to review how current approval processes refer to section 27. Disposal programmes, land transfers, capital commitments and relevant non-capital contracts may now produce a different answer on consent if the calculation is limited to activity since 31 March 2025. The amendment may also reduce the amount of historic material that officers need to examine when assessing cumulative consideration. Even where the Government says no significant sector-wide impact is expected, individual authorities facing dissolution will still need to check transaction histories, advice notes and internal sign-off routes against the revised statutory wording.
The Order extends to England and Wales, although the instrument is published under the heading of local government in England and amends a regime used for English local government reorganisation under the 2007 Act. It was signed on behalf of the Secretary of State by Alison McGovern, Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 6 July 2026. The explanatory note states that no full impact assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, effect on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. Even so, authorities subject to section 7 or section 10 implementation orders now have a clear statutory date change that should be reflected in consent processes from 7 July 2026 onwards.