The recent news on the state of the nation's economy has been more positive than we have seen in a while, although it appeared to come as a surprise to some in the media.

It is less of a surprise to districts who have been working in their localities to deliver growth in challenging times.

For example, Rugby has some of the largest growth going with around 7,500 dwellings planned, 67ha of employment sites, four primary schools and one secondary, four local centres and an assortment of infrastructure to support these developments.  This will create jobs and homes and communities that will thrive for years to come.

The central Lincolnshire joint planning unit covering the districts of the City of Lincoln, North Kestevenand West Lindsey is delivering over21,000 houses across eight developmentsites, over 80ha of employmentsites, and the community and infrastructure to support this.

This partnership of three districts delivering developments together shows how much we can achieve even in tough times.

Right across England districts are working hard with partners from the public and private sector to accelerate development, particularly housing, being innovative both in the way that they secure funding to get schemes started and how they deliver vital infrastructure to support such schemes.

But not all development is necessarily welcome.  I returned from holiday last week to find a proposal which had that morning been submitted to the Airports Commission for a four runway airport (bigger than Heathrow) covering a huge swathe of land in theheart of the Vale of White Horse.

With a rail spur to link with HS2 and road links to the M40 and M4 the implications across both the South and Vale would be enormous.  Needless to say we will not be supporting the proposal, but I did point out to my Vale leader that it would be a quick way of getting an uplift in our business rates income.  He smiled, then quickly moved on to another topic

David Buckle is chairman of the District Chief Executives' Network