Ministers have demanded councils improve their productivity but Diary wonders whether the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) should look at itself first.

As lovely as it is that minister Simon Hoare took the effort to thank local government colleagues for ‘all of the hard work' to ‘ensure the successful delivery of the recent elections' on 2 May, was there really a need for DLUHC to send his letter twice?