Watford appears more often than any other body on APSE's 2026 finalists list, and is one of nine up for Overall Council of the Year on 17 September.
Watford Borough Council is named six times on the shortlist for this year’s national local government service awards. Watford Today counted the published list. No other council or organisation appears more often.
The awards are run by the Association for Public Service Excellence, a not-for-profit body that works with more than 300 UK councils. Winners are announced at a charity dinner in Liverpool on Thursday 17 September, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Princes Dock.
Where Watford is on the list
APSE’s published finalists list names Watford Borough Council in these categories:
- Best Building and Housing Initiative
- Best Efficiency and Transformation Initiative
- Best Health and Well-being Initiative
- Best Innovation or Demand Management Initiative
- Best Service Team of the Year: Parks and Green Spaces, twice
That is six entries across five categories, not six categories. The council’s own announcement in July said six categories. The reason for the difference is the parks category, where Watford has two separate entries.
The council named the projects behind each entry on 18 August. They are the Riverwell regeneration, an efficiency and transformation submission, the River Colne restoration, the Green Loop, and two separate parks submissions covering the Green Spaces Strategy and the parks and open spaces service.
Council of the Year: nine in the running
Overall Council of the Year is judged separately, and APSE announced that shortlist in its own release. Nine organisations made it. Watford Borough Council is one of them, alongside Antrim and Newtownabbey, Carmarthenshire, Fife, Lancashire, Liverpool, South Ayrshire, Torfaen, and Outcomes Matter Consulting working with the London Borough of Ealing.
Watford is the only Hertfordshire name on that list, and the only one from the East of England. The rest are two Scottish councils, two Welsh, one Northern Irish, two from the North West and one London entry.
The council said in July that it had the highest number of nominations of any UK local authority this year. Our count of the published list bears that out. These are the organisations named most often:
One caution on the counting. Outcomes Matter Consulting is a consultancy entering jointly with Ealing, not a council in its own right. Among councils, Lancashire is the nearest to Watford on five.
What it means for you
These are industry awards, not an inspection. APSE is a membership body, councils enter their own submissions, and a shortlist is not an independent audit of how well your bins are collected or your housing repairs are done. Read it as recognition from peers, and judge the underlying services separately.
What is useful is the list of projects the council chose to put forward. It tells you where Watford thinks its record is strongest: Riverwell, the River Colne, the Green Loop and the parks. Two of the six entries are about the borough’s parks.
There was a clock on all of this. Watford Borough Council was due to close on 1 April 2028 under the government’s Hertfordshire reorganisation, with its services passing to a new South West Hertfordshire Council. On 7 September 2026 the government paused the whole programme and told councils to stop implementation work, so that date is now under review and no new one has been set.
For the services themselves, see our guides to bin collection days in Watford, Watford council tax bands and parking in Watford.
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