While there is much hand-wringing about local government's role and whether its services can survive in their present form with all the cuts we sometimes forget how its real influence far outweighs its public image.

I was reminded of this by two events I attended earlier this week. The first was a training meeting of Thurrock Council managers whose chief executive Graham Farrant, a former chief of Barking and Dagenham LBC , said that while the development corporation had come and gone and the RDA had come and gone and the government office had come and gone the council remained, a constant presence throughout the shifting sands of central government policy.