It must be hard work being a parliamentary lobbyist for local government right now. As soon as the lobbyist gets to know the right minister there's another Government reshuffle. We are now onto our fourth housing minister in just two years (in Kit Malthouse, a former The MJ columnist), our third communities secretary since 2015 and the bright new local government minister, Rishi Sunak, has only been in post since January. Of course all this is at the time of going to press. By Thursday they may all have changed again.

At least however the sector had a chance to see the new communities secretary James Brokenshire (in post since April) in action at last week's Local Government Association conference in Birmingham. Last year his predecessor Sajid Javid managed to insult and upset delegates over Grenfell, suggesting the sector was at fault. This time Mr Brokenshire went out of his way to placate his audience. Citing his own roots as the son of a council chief executive he told delegates he was ‘hugely grateful for all your efforts'. More tellingly he said he would ‘always stand up for you and for local government's interests' in contrast to former communities secretary Eric Pickles who always insisted he was in Cabinet to represent the public against the sector not the other way round. There was even a retread of ‘double devolution' except Mr Brokenshire called it ‘ultra localism.'