The Budget offered up good and bad, with a few missed opportunities thrown into the mix. The prospect of unexpected new cuts to council funding in 2014/15 will be the issue pre-occupying many at the senior levels of local government.

That we have become accustomed to nasty surprises in the last few years doesn't seem to make them any less surprising – or nasty. To put the issue into context, when spending plans were set out for the 2011/12 to 2014/15 period, local government was scheduled to take a real terms cut in funding from the centre of 28%.