The launch last week of the Fawcett Society and the Local Government Information Unit's (LGiU) report on women in local government is a woeful assessment of the gender balance in local government.

The report, which follows a commission on women in local government conducted by the two organisations, says: ‘We have found that there is a harmful culture of sexism in parts of local government politics which would not be out of place in the 1970s.'