As hard as it may be to fathom now, over 20 years ago, Whitehall negotiated with not one English local authority association, but three – representing the districts, the metropolitan authorities and the counties, respectively. In the early 1990s, with local government reorganisation underway and 46 new unitary councils set to come on-stream from 1996, the associations began to ask whether they might be more influential as a single, merged body.

Geoffrey (now Lord) Filkin, a former council chief executive who was appointed the last secretary of the Association of District Councils (ADC), was asked in the interview for his job what he thought of the idea of a single association.