At the Conservative Party Conference last week Chancellor George Osborne committed to delivering a national budget surplus by 2020.

In June, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said he would keep to the Coalition's spending cuts until at least the end of 2015/16.

The message to local government is clear. There will be no let-up in cuts to council funding any time soon. The message from local government is equally clear. Something has to change or vital services will be a risk of failing

The fact the statements from the Chancellor and his shadow matter so much to council services betrays a fundamentally inequitable relationship between central and local government.

Despite some positive but limited steps to increase local control, council income remains managed by the centre to a degree that requires us to scrutinise the signals coming out of Whitehall like Kremlinologists in the hope of gaining some idea of how much money we will have in two, three, four-year's time to deliver services people use every day.

For those of us with a background in the business world it is utterly perplexing that a system of funding has evolved which actively generates uncertainty and makes it much more difficult to plan for the future. Yet that is what has been allowed to happen to funding for the most directly democratically accountable part of the public sector.

Take as an example the 2015/16 Spending Round announcement. In the Chancellor's speech he indicated that local government's central funding would be cut by 10 per cent.