What does good look like? This was a question posed at the recent District Councils' Network (DCN) conference, but not about speaker Richard Coles' talk recalling his unlikely life story from boy chorister to reverend and novelist via Bronski Beat, the Communards, Strictly and I'm A Celebrity.

Following a keynote speech by minister Jim McMahon, a discussion session observed that things have been so difficult for so long in local government we've forgotten what good looks like. I recognised what one panellist neatly described as being on a ‘turbo-charged hamster wheel' of reactivity. We've weathered years of austerity, Brexit, the pandemic, the cost of living crisis and now local government reorganisation (LGR), which requires the remaining district and county councils to be the architects of our own demise. That's one way of looking at it, but an alternative is to welcome the opportunity it presents to reimagine public services for the future.