There may be no such thing as a new idea, but often old ideas are not a bad place to find inspiration. I seem to have spent a fair bit of this week dusting down old reports in an effort to remember who called for what and when.

The Lyons Inquiry may be nearly a decade old, but it seems it is never quite buried. Despite Sir Michael Lyons' subsequent – and frequent – reviews, his deep-dive investigation into local government finance keeps bubbling up to the surface.