Local government may sometimes feel like a constant game of Whac-a-Mole, batting down budgets with one hand, dealing with an influx of asylum seekers amid a housing crisis on the other, all while keeping adult's and children's services from buckling under pressure and remembering to fly the appropriate flag above the town hall.

However, one anonymous chief told an Inner Circle Consulting #lovelocalgov event last week that the NHS was in permacrisis, lumbering from one thing to another with no solutions, desperately trying to keep up with demand and dreading the winter pressures to come.