Successful councils of the future will be increasingly ‘agnostic' about how they finance and deliver local public services in a world of austerity, a senior consultant has claimed.

Iain Hasdell, UK head of local and regional government at KPMG, said an inevitable council response to tight public sector settlements would be an open-minded approach to service finance mechanisms – hinting at a widespread reinvigoration of public-private partnerships in pursuit of ‘public value'.