Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine challenged local authorities with a major overhaul of the way in which local government is organised and funded in order to reinvigorate provincial Britain.

Heseltine, a renowned expert on urban development policy who played an important role in the regeneration of Liverpool following the Toxteth riots in the early 1980s, used his conference speech to call for a new ‘bonfire of controls’ on local authorities to allow local people to develop real solutions for local problems instead of the generalisations, platitudes and formula that so often emanate from central Government.