What was billed as a fringe meeting at last week's Conservative Party conference on industrial strategy in the English counties organised by the County Councils' Network and think-tank ResPublica – and chaired, I may add, by yours truly – turned into a lively scrap about whether the local government sector is too obsessed about structure. The answer, according to one prominent MP speaking was yes, it is but many in the audience disagreed, blaming in turn, the Government.

The question is whether with more powers and a different structure local government, especially counties in two-tier areas, can deliver stronger local economies or whether it can do so without any structural shake-up. Which comes first – the horse of local government or the cart of reorganisation? George Freeman, mid-Norfolk Tory MP and chair of the prime minister's policy board, backs the former. Indeed, after lambasting last week's fringe's audience for ‘arguing about structure' he said councils should stop scrapping with districts and get together to produce a joint vision and a strategy to present to government. ‘But we've already done that', responded one county deputy leader in the audience angrily and we're still waiting for a response. Doubtless, councils in Dorset, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, also still awaiting a decision from the beleaguered Department for Communities and Local Government about their merger plans, would agree as would those for whom the Government's insistence on shire-elected mayors – now removed – had proved a turn-off. And no one could say local government lacked ambition; there were 34 bids to become combined authorities by September 2015.