A frequent comment we receive when we survey our members is that financial planning is currently harder than it was during the period of austerity after 2010. This may sound surprising, but it is due to the unprecedented level of uncertainty local government currently faces.

There has been half a decade of single-year settlements with the funding system increasingly fragmented and complex. Reforms that were proposed but have subsequently been heavily delayed and are now way overdue. As one finance officer put it to us, the situation now is ‘like budgeting with a blindfold on'.