The Government’s proposal to hive off part of New Homes Bonus (NHB) to LEPs hit a nerve with district councils and the District Councils’ Network (DCN) has made a robust response to the proposals.

The crux of the response is that of all the ways the Government could have raised £400m from local government, top-slicing NHB is just about the worst it could have come up with.

The whole episode has been a sorry tale.  It is common knowledge that the proposal came very late in the day as part of the Spending Review and was foisted upon DCLG by the Treasury.

No-one thought through the consequences, in particular that a lot of the money it proposes taking away from local government is the very money that we use to promote economic growth – so little if any net gain by passing it to the unelected, unaccountable LEPs.

Equally galling is the dismissal of the words of Grant Shapps, who assured us on the introduction of NHB that it was intended as a long-term feature of local government funding and councils would be free to use it how they wished.

Contrast that with the criticism levelled by current ministers that some councils were putting the money into their revenue accounts to support delivery of essential services – how outrageous!

The final twist of the knife was to set county councils against district councils in two-tier areas by offering competing options for how to collect the money.

Unsurprisingly, each tier set up base camp exactly where you would expect and a great deal of time and effort has been spent over the last month, led by Neil Clarke, chairman of the DCN, trying to identify common ground that could form part of a united response.

And that common ground is to give government a simple message – think again. The proposal does not kick in until 2015/16, so there is a full year to have a mature dialogue about the best way we can contribute to supporting a growth fund for LEPs.

Let’s hope the secretary of state is listening.

Nicola Bulbeck is chief executive of Teignbridge DC