Due to lead in times, I am writing this column on Christmas Eve. Despite being a confirmed atheist, I love the festive season, and Christmas carols in particular.

Each year I try to get along to several carol concerts as for me, they conjure up the magic of this time of the year.

That sounds like a contradiction – how can an atheist like Christmas carols?  Probably because they were imprinted on me as a child at primary school where we sang these traditional songs at assembly for many weeks leading up to Christmas.

Consistency is important. In policy development, it creates trust that there is a coherent over-arching paradigm, rather than a random and unpredictable operating environment.

If I know the principles that the Whitehall policy wonks are prioritising, I can work with the grain of that in developing the projects and programmes that my own organisation needs to survive into an uncertain future.

But, consistency seems not to be a high priority for our DCLG colleagues.  As examples, on the one hand we see the policies that strengthen the hand of local politicians, such as neutering the standards arrangements, allowing local discretion in returning to the committee system, or downplaying the role of statutory officers.

On the other hand, we see local politicians being neutered from above, by minimising influence over schools, dictating waste collection arrangements, and requiring local referenda for local council tax increases.

These contradictions make it difficult to ascertain any over-arching theory of improvement. One explanation could be a simple lack of intellectual rigour.

An alternative is that policy is made on the hoof, as an act of whim rather than principle.

Or maybe there is simply a game of trading policies between powerful people whose conceptual views of the world differ. Whatever the explanation, it certainly makes our life much more difficult than it needs to be.

Still, it is the season of goodwill to all, so I should be as charitable as I can be, and assume that there is indeed an overarching plan, and that it is simply my inadequacy that I cannot see it.

It follows that trying harder to understand it must be my new year's resolution for 2014.

Abdool Kara is chief executive of Swale BC