WELL, that was a bit of a damp squib. I’m talking about the budget.

All the preceding kite flying or rolling the pitch as they like to say, and then pretty much nothing.

Very disappointed there was nothing to support our hospitality industry. Equally disappointing was the extra three years’ freeze on tax thresholds.

They say they’ve stuck to their manifesto promises, but they haven’t.

Taxes on working people and pensioners will be going up. All hidden behind the euphemistic fiscal drag. It’s classic political smoke and mirrors.

The worst thing about is the lowest paid and some of the least well-off pensioners will be dragged into tax as their personal allowances are frozen.

It would be much more honest and progressive to just put up income tax, allowing the lowest paid not to be taxed. Hardly country before party.

WHERE’S THE VISION?

Most people know they have to pay taxes, but they want to see a plan.

It’s meant to be about economic growth, yet it’s fair to say they’ve achieved the opposite.

The reforms of the planning system are cloth eared. At best they may generate a tiny percentage of growth, but at what cost?

Removing environmental checks and democratic oversight are setting dangerous precedents.

One might have more sympathy but they’re not going to deliver the houses we want. Developers landbank as the market, not housing need, is the driving force.

How can successive governments be so blind to the glaringly obvious?

We’ve been promised reform of council tax and business rates for as long as I can remember. Tinkering at the edges just won’t cut it.

In typical central government style, it will be local councils that send out the tax bills, but any extra revenue will be snaffled up by Westminster.

There’s nothing to sort out the very real financial issues of local government. Just kicking vital issues like social care and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) into the long grass doesn’t solve anything.

Devon, like many local councils, is running on empty.

Delivering the local services that affect local residents’ everyday lives. Lots of verbiage, very little action. It all begs the question, do they know what they’re doing?

REORGANISATION ISN’T THE SILVER BULLET

I’d always had sympathy with the idea of creating unitary councils from district and county councils.

There are definitely benefits to be gained, especially when this is combined with genuine devolution.

How ironic, that a government that promised us devolution with no mention of reorganisation in its manifesto, is now delivering cack-handed reorganisation, while devolution slips off the agenda. Telling us what and how to do it, is the opposite of our hopes and expectations.

It’s also going to cost tens of millions of pounds of council taxpayers money and there’s no guarantee it will be any better (or cheaper.)

The more Westminster and Whitehall stumbles on, the more it seems to me they’re reorganising the wrong part of government.

Local authorities might not be perfect, but I suggest they do a lot better job than central government. Just imagine if we oversaw a calamitous project like HS2 or continually borrowed money to make up the revenue deficit (all though that’s just what we may be forced to do.)

Year on year we deliver balanced budgets with less resources. We complete numerous projects, often from government grant to be fair, but without the disastrous over-spends so endemic within central government.

Wake up and smell the coffee, it’s not the town halls that need reorganising, it’s Westminster! But, as the saying goes, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

Councillor Julian Brazil

Leader of Devon County Council