Last week we saw elections take place across England – although for a smaller number of councils than had originally been planned.

Suspending polls in areas that are a priority for devolution provoked outcry in some quarters. Chairman of the District Councils' Network Cllr Sam Chapman-Allen called the ‘shockingly tight timescale' given by the Government to counties to decide if they seeked to reorganise and wanted to postpone local elections ‘anti-democratic'.