Local government review and reorganisation has had a chequered history.

Many local government solicitors have been facing the double whammy of reorganisation and compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) for legal services.

Some will have feared for their jobs and suffered considerable anxiety because the government's position over the relationship between the review and CCT remained unclear for some time.

Finally, it was agreed that CCT for legal services should be postponed for those authorities that were undergoing re-organisation under the local government review.

But it took a long time to establish what the government meant by this and to announce an unequivocal programme for CCT and its effect on the re-organised local authorities.However, solicitors are now discovering that they can compete with some confidence for the legal services contract of their authorities.

Lawyers in the new unitary authorities are finding that the demands on their services have increased significantly.

With no further resources available to cope with this, prioritising work is essential, and there are occasions when the legal work required to re-organise a local authority could be put out to the private sector.

A viable partnership is possible with private sector colleagues who can offer assistance with specialist work and peak loads.The in-house solicitor preparing for unitary status will be immersed in advising on budgets, transfer of property, contracts, personnel, litigation and insurance issues, to name a few.

There are new schemes for committee administration and delegation to be established, and leading project teams on unfamiliar topics.

The logistics of simple matters such as collating files for the successor authority and ensuring continuity present challenges many solicitors would prefer not to confront.

As with other local authority staff of re-organised authorities, solicitors will be facing these responsibilities at a time when they will be concerned a bout job security.The restructuring of local authorities also presents opportunities for internal re-organisation.

Solicitors, in particular, cannot assume automatic transfer to another job.

At the most senior level of chief officer there is likely to be national competition for posts in the new authorities.

At other levels, a system of prior consideration will operate whereby there will be competition for jobs on a ring-fence basis, that is limited to the transferring and receiving authorities.

There may also be questions concerning the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations.

Clouding these issues, there are inevitably financial constraints imposed by local government funding generally and identifying transferring budgets in individual authorities.It was unrealistic to expect, politically or financially, that small district authorities would achieve unitary status on a large scale.

The local government commissioners dutifully toured the country between 1992 and 1994 receiving what must have seemed interminable, and sometimes hopeless, submissions.

Meanwhile, disenchantment was setting in with the growing antipathy between the commission and the government, and tight targets were set for drawing the exercise to an end.

The effect was to make local authorities more realistic in their ambitions and to advocate the status quo in many areas.We are now moving to a situation where, in England, the local government system will remain substantially two tiered.

In Scotland and Wales, under contemporaneous legislation, it is to be based upon single tier authorities.

Scotland currently has 32 unitary authorities; Wales has 22 and in England there are 45 new unitary authorities.

Of these 45, the Isle of Wight became operational in April 1994; 13 will come into force on 1 April 1996 (including York, Hull and Bristol) and another 13 on 1 April 1997 (including Derby, Leicester, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton and Stoke).

The remaining authorities located in Berkshire, Lancashire, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Shropshire and Essex are expected to come into force on 1 April 1998.