On 7^th September 2026 the government withdrew some local government reorganisation (LGR) decisions and paused plans for others. The new unitary councils that were due to take up full powers in 2028 will mostly now run on existing boundaries. This means that the 2028 vesting day is no longer something to plan against with confidence.

If you were a council facing LGR, procurements were hard. LGR had a huge scope, with hurdles, hard decisions, and difficult sign offs. This meant upgrading tech might have been put on pause.

Now, we are presented with the opportunity to quickly modernise how your council manages and deals with income and give it the financial foundations it needs for the future.

What is waiting to update costing you?

Council tax collection in England fell to 95.6% in 2025-26, down 0.3 percentage points on the previous year. Arrears outstanding on 31 March 2026 stood at £7.4 billion, an increase of £782 million on the year before.

Much of that is driven by factors well outside any council’s control, and no payment system fixes the cost-of-living crisis. But the way a council receives income does affect how straightforward it is for people to pay.

Ageing payment systems tend to make the problems more severe:

• People give up partway through difficult payment journeys 
• Costs are hidden in manual reconciliation
• Data often takes an export to Excel before it tells you anything. So, daily decisions get made with less information than they should and take longer to make.

Then there’s what the contract itself costs. The Local Government Association (LGA) describes a costly pattern of staying with legacy systems: “Long-term contracts, high exiting costs and a lack of suitable alternatives can create vendor lock-in, making it difficult and expensive for councils to switch suppliers even if they are dissatisfied with the service or offerings.” And reports “instances of price variances and anecdotal reports of price gouging”.

Do you need to know what happens next with LGR?

In the same 7^th September announcement, MHCLG confirmed they remain committed to effective and sustainable local government and to simplifying these structures. Reorganisation has not necessarily gone away.

But, whatever system you are running when a merger arrives is a system the new authority inherits. A clean, modern, and well-documented income management system brings significant benefits to any potential future council, while a legacy one can become an untangling job.

And if it doesn’t happen in your area, you have the modern system you needed anyway.

How Local Gov IMS helps you

Local Gov IMS is a modern payments and income management system. It started in 2017 as an MHCLG-funded Local Digital Fund project, built with councils, for councils. It is currently used by Newcastle-under-Lyme, Barnsley and Burnley.

Getting paid, without the friction

Residents expect to pay their council the same way they pay everyone else. Get a modern payment experience integrated across online channels, in person, and telephony.

In this way Local Gov IMS improves your council’s efficiency with better collection rates, fewer calls and fewer suspense records.

Rob Dobson, Chief Operating Officer at Burnley Council has noted how:

“Our customers increasingly expect the same smooth, fast and intuitive payment experience they receive from major online retailers — Local Gov IMS helps us deliver that”.

While Sam Clark, Service Director of Information & Technology at Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council added:

“Tailwind Digital have helped deliver a modern income management platform that makes it easier for residents to pay for council services while giving our teams greater flexibility, control, and efficiency behind the scenes. The solution has delivered exactly what we set out to achieve and provides a strong foundation for future service improvements.”

Simplifying your day-to-day

Local Gov IMS has been built around users with councils giving input at each stage of development, so you can do your job easily.

Make clear decisions fast with:

• Real-time income visibility and live transaction data across multiple payment methods
• Inbuilt reporting with intuitive access to your data, giving you the clarity you need to easily assess and make decisions
• Auto create import processing rules to reduce suspense volumes automatically, and benefit from AI powered notes to help you allocate suspense with ease

See more features and benefits on our Local Gov IMS product page.

Why it costs less over time

The usual model is a proprietary licence. You pay for the right to use software your council will never own.

Local Gov IMS is enterprise open-source. There are no IP licence fees, which often makes it cheaper overall, and everything developed for one council is available to the others for free. It began as an MHCLG-funded Local Digital Fund project and has been built with councils, for councils.

Local Gov IMS and Tailwind Digital

Local Gov IMS is managed by us, Tailwind Digital, experts in open-source technology and local government.

We hand you a team, people who’ve worked in and around local government, who know your setup, and who are reachable when it matters. From project scoping through to go-live and beyond, we’re with you.

Find out more

Book a no-pressure discovery call. We’ll listen to where you are, share what we’ve seen work at other councils, and be honest about whether Local Gov IMS is the right fit.