This month I celebrate my eighth year at the County Councils' Network (CCN). Over this time many policy agendas have come and gone, but one constant has been the debate on how you deliver devolution outside our major cities.

CCN has consistently made the case that in order to break the devolution deadlock in non-metropolitan areas we need to move beyond subjective definitions of ‘functional economic areas' and use county geographies as the building blocks for devolution.