The new Government has a commanding majority and is laying down long term foundations for its time in government around national missions of clean energy, growth, health, opportunity and safety. Local government is a key local partner in these missions – arguably its foundation and key delivery agent. However, the local government sector is in the eye of a financial storm, severely underfunded, undermined by continual uncertainty and pressurised each day by new demographic and place-based concerns.

The sector is basically bankrupt, suffering more than a decade of unfunded mandates, lacking a meaningful process of relative needs assessment and equalisation between location, suffering the frustration and cost of competitive bidding and the straitjacket of a limited war chest of income sources. Georgia Gould, the new Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office, is going to lead a review into this situation.