It is often difficult to lift our heads above the parapet for a few minutes to think about our role in the wider scheme of things. We do local so well. It can sometimes be our sole focus and for those outside the key battlegrounds of local government reorganisation, the best place to do business.

Districts have banged on long enough about our place in this wider context and this will hopefully start to bear fruit as the UK develops its industrial strategy for a pre- and post-Brexit world, when the rhetoric around ‘local’ will truly become just that.