Let's begin 17 years ago with an unsung hero in the form of Peter Stybelski, chief executive of Cumbria CC. A bleak experience of trying to restructure local government in the county left him determined to find another route to improvement. ‘If people who really know the place decided how taxpayers' money was best used here,' he told me, ‘I believe they'd spend it very differently.'

Peter asked us to find out. Rather than issuing a survey or consultation document, we brought together 150 local people from all walks of life for three days. They got into buses and scattered across the county to meet residents in housing estates, industrial parks, care homes, shops and schools, asking what mattered to them.