The food emblem of the Local Government Finance settlement must be the mince pie now that its timing is clearly established as well-beyond the dividing line between autumn and winter. Council budget-setting, on the other hand, has long been associated with the run-up to Lent and is better represented by the pancake.

Some of us across local government might think that there’s been too much lemon and not enough sugar on our budget pancakes in recent years.

I have often found budget setting is an unsatisfactory experience, conceived and driven in many cases as a technocratic process to apportion available funds to meet an organisation’s expectations and aspirations. A thin veneer of objectivity masks the reality that budget decisions tend to follow the path of least resistance.