"These are the same officers who have misled them as to what the current legislation means - so it is unlikely that very much will change.

In some places that is going to be so, and I can see how the Shanbles experience locally must have given him a pretty jaundiced view of these people. However I suspect that there are other places where the question hasn't really come up, or where local practice has been to be pretty accepting of a considerable degree of flexibility. And I am sure that there are councillors and officers who are potentially on our side.

If there is a prospect of a model policy statement being produced by this review committee, obviously the important thing is to do whatever can be done to edge it towards being a model we would wish to see copied. The likelihood is that any centrally produced model policy will in fact be adopted in most places.