Local government reorganisation in England on 1 April brought an end to 44 district councils and their responsibility for contaminated land and planning which has passed to nine unitary county authorities.
The move passed with little public attention and many, though not all, of the districts' staff transferred to the new authorities.
Overall, the new unitaries will have far fewer elected politicians; the nine new councils will have 725 councillors compared to 2,037 previously.
There may yet be advantages for land contamination work, however.
The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health has been aware of the problems encountered by contaminated land officers working on their own in smaller districts and its Standing Conference on Land Contamination has promoted co-operation.
"We've been encouraging them for some time to get together with neighbouring authorities and form consortia etc.," says principal policy officer Howard Price. "If that's a consequence of this, that's all to the good."
Financial savings were the Government's main motivation for the reorganization and a big loss of experience at chief officer level - in environmental health, planning etc. - is occurring.
The Planning Officers Society - which came about as a unified body as a result of earlier reorganisations - says there have been a number of retirements among chief planning officers.
It will be watching to see how the changes affect the profession.
"There's a different way of doing things in a unitary authority," said spokesman John Silvester.
"Planning might have been one of the bigger spenders in a district but now it has to compete with services like education and social work."
The best local government minister John Healey could find to say about the changes was that they would strip out public confusion about who to speak to about their local services and renew councils' emphasis on making monetary savings.
