A fourth senior minister this week urged councils to ‘push back' at Whitehall edicts and use new powers to improve communities – indicating the coalition remains keen on its devolution agenda as it heads into Parliament's summer recess.

Francis Maude, lead minister at the Cabinet Office, told a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group on 9 July that councils should fight centralist diktats which impose unnecessary burdens on councils and hinder localism.