This Friday I shall be attending a seminar in Manchester organised by the CBI looking at the next steps for the city region's community budgets agenda.

It is timely considering the national network is now being officially rolled out. Breaking down silos is the direction of travel for the public sector. Much of the recent LGA conference was devoted to how health and adult care should merge into a single entity and it is one goal on which Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham agree. Umpteen ministers from George Osborne downwards tell us managements and services must share costs and staff. The cash-strapped Treasury even found £100m in last month's spending round to expedite the exchange of data and IT as services join together. The one area where it will be diffi cult to tell the political parties apart as they fi rm up their manifestos for the next general election is in public policy. They all agree that to maintain effi ciences silos need to come down, that cultural and workforce barriers must be eliminated, that money must follow need rather than funding streams and that duplication must be slashed as agencies merge into single pots.