Welcome to the first issue of The MJ for the new decade – and what a decade it has been. The twenty-teens have seen political turmoil and inertia in equal measures, but most of all it has been the era of austerity.

While we may have seen 10 years of belt-tightening, fiscal creativity and service redesign, local government has continued to find new ways of adapting to the new normal – just as the rest of the country is waking up to the issues.