The headlines from last month's budget came as no surprise to local government. We have always known that the period through to 2020 is going to require the same level of savings again that local government has been able to develop and deliver in the first half of this austerity decade. 

It's not the same challenge though that we face – it's a much harder one that requires local government as a whole to share their learning from the first 4 years of austerity, to inform our plans for the future.

The great thing about local government is that we have all to date approached the challenge differently – from sharing management across councils ; whole place community budgets; to co-operative councils and commissioning councils.