When Derek Myers and Newcastle City Council chief executive Pat Ritchie make their tour of the country to identify roadblocks to the reform of public services, they might be well served to examine unseen obstacles.

This would be the message from the Local Government Association (LGA), which is undertaking a review of quango bodies, or non departmental public bodies (NDPBs) as the man in Whitehall would like them to be so termed.

Evidence from the current run of community budgets pilots, the LGA claims, points to joined up services and funding at local level needing the democratic stamp of locally-elected councillors as the foundation for change.