“I laugh,” texted one senior council figure this week about their inability to get their own area’s Covid test results from government, “so I don’t kill anyone.” They were joking.
Hopefully. But the level of exasperation within town halls right now about their fractured relationship with the centre feels unparalleled in a sector that normally takes that as something of a given.
Many council figures seem at the end of their tether. You may not necessarily have sympathy with town halls in the usual run of things - many people don’t - but they have had to be front and centre during this crisis.
From care homes to testing, distributing emergency food parcels to administering infection control, they have been carrying out the government’s orders