The concept of a fair funding review for local government is a misnomer. Each local authority has its own local needs, its own local circumstances and a good case to argue why it needs more cash. After a decade of austerity, with a backlog of capital investment and cuts, the real fear is that it will be an ‘unfair' funding review for everyone.

We all know that in reality each local authority believes it could do so much more if it just had adequate funds – and this is right in most cases. Which is why tensions run quite so high when it comes to deciding just how to slice up the funding cake.