Some questions in life are hard to answer: What kicked off the Big Bang? What came first, the chicken or the egg?

But others are far more straightforward. Like: What is two plus two? And why did Devon County Council want to postpone elections this May?

The council’s Conservative leaders would say they wanted to postpone the vote so they could be at the top of the queue for the Government’s devolution programme, which is going to see a radical shake-up in local government organisation across the country.

But I rather think their knee jerk request to postpone was more to do with their record than any great enthusiasm for a quick reorganisation.

The record they will be running on is pretty poor, and luckily the government has rejected their request, so residents will be able to judge for themselves on May 1st when we go to the polls across Devon.

Ofsted has ranked the council’s children’s services as inadequate or requiring improvement for a decade. That’s ten years of failing our most vulnerable children.

If you’ve never needed children’s services then you’re lucky – but for those who need them, they are a lifeline. And for them to have failed so badly, for so long, is a shocking record.

Last March, the council needed a £95m bailout to put it on a sustainable financial footing. Our roads are quite simply a disgrace.

And just 4.9% of EHCPs are currently being delivered within the 20-week target, with many parents left with no option but to take the Council to court to get the SEND support their children need.

It’s certainly not a record to be proud of.

The council’s decision in January to try to postpone elections was nothing more than a shameless power grab from a Conservative administration that is tired and out of ideas.

So, it was great to see last week the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government confirming that Devon’s postponement bid had been unsuccessful and that elections will go ahead as planned on May 1st.

The reorganisation of local government here will come, but exactly what it will look like is yet to be decided – and the government has promised ‘extensive engagement with local communities and MPs’. We’ll hold them to that.

In the meantime the Conservatives have 11 weeks to convince voters why they deserve their trust, after years of inadequacy and declining services.