For those in local government, this year’s party conference season has been one of the most significant for many years.

The discussions around whether an incoming government should push for reorganisation and where further funding cuts should fall have resolved little. Overshadowing such concerns has been a more fundamental theme – the rising tide of devolution.

When Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg said: ‘We now have a rare opportunity, a rare moment of consensus. There will be more powers, more control and more freedom for the people of Scotland, just as there will be for the people of Wales, Northern Ireland and England,’ those words could just as easily have come from David Cameron or Ed Miliband.