It has long been an unfortunate contrast that, while local government has lost about a third of its workforce since 2010 and the advent of ‘devolution', central Government has paradoxically become larger.

In fact, the civil service expanded by almost a quarter from 384,000 officials in 2016 to 475,000 at the end of last year while Office for National Statistics data shows local government's workforce size shrunk by about 10% during the same period.