When I first became an elected councillor in the 70s, the practice of outsourcing was in its early infancy. Fast-forward some 40 years (skipping past several iterations of the Local Government Act) and we find that indirect service provision now accounts for over a quarter of all local government spend.

It is a multi-billion pound industry of private companies seeking to convince us that they can deliver the optimal blend of ‘quality’ and ‘value’. And, to be fair, these providers do a pretty decent job most of the time.

They get on with the mundane routine of the day-to-day, which in turn goes largely under most people’s radar. As we well know, our constituents are often far too busy with work and other commitments to concern themselves with the precise details of how public bodies spend their money: if the tax bills are stable, and if local services are tolerable, then that is usually ‘good enough’.