The County Council Network (CCN) has just released an analysis of children’s services funding and demand. It’s disappointing to confirm that urban areas receive three times as much for vulnerable children as rural areas. Every area will have its own unique pressures, but the removal of the ‘remoteness’ factor in calculations means our children are being unfairly penalised. Once again, local council taxpayers are being forced to pick up the bill. Even taking into account the council tax income, cities are able to spend considerably more than rural areas.

Ideally, we would invest heavily in prevention and early intervention. If families and children can get the support they need early, it’s the best outcome, especially for the children. This is something we are doing in Devon now. The problem we have is that, with our statutory duties to support children, our funding for prevention is under severe pressure. As the CCN say, ‘counties have been forced to spend more on families in crisis, whilst spending on preventative services has fallen sharply.’ You only have to look at the expenditure on ‘crisis care ’, which has rocketed in rural areas over the past few years. At the same time, cities that have been able to maintain their spend on preventative services have seen nowhere near as high increases.

We know prevention and early intervention work, and government must recognise the ask for these extra resources. It’s a false economy not to support rural councils, as it costs us all extra in the long run and, more importantly, our children will suffer. I’m not pretending there’s loads of money for government to dish out, but here’s a strategy we know works, and investment now will be worth tenfold in the future.

It’s why I’m such a massive supporter of investment in education. The problem is you don’t see the benefits for a number of years. Governments are continually looking for a quick fix, but in truth there isn’t one. It takes an awful lot of political courage and a rock-solid conviction to do what’s right now for the medium and longer term.

Government quite rightly wants to see economic growth. In order to get that growth, you need to have the building blocks of well-educated, healthy and happy communities. It is local government that is most directly involved in delivering these blocks and I get the impression the new prime minister understands that. It’s why he’s so keen to see genuine devolution, and he has my full support on that.

Like a bad penny, LGR has reared its head again. Just when we thought we could get on with delivering the services for local residents and communities, government has resurrected the wretched LGR. All is not lost, and we had already been working on a new way of delivering local government services in Devon, the ‘Devon Way.’ By converging all our IT systems, we can create one front door for local government. It would allow us to keep the sovereignty of each council while enhancing the shared services model as we have between South Hams and West Devon. For these two separate councils we have a shared chief executive, head of finance and head of legal, saving on duplication. It’s what government wants us to achieve but without all the chaos and massive costs involved. More evolution than revolution. We just hope the new prime minister is genuinely in listening mode.