As my council continues its sometimes painful journey to the completion of its local plan, the leader and I have been doing the rounds of neighbouring councils in order to fulfil our duty to co-operate with them, as failure to do so risks our plan failing at the first hurdle.

Our preferred strategy for delivering much-needed affordable high quality homes is to promote a new garden village-type settlement and three of the possible locations straddle borders with three different local authorities, so there is much to discuss.