The rolling scandals generated by Boris Johnson’s government show that Westminster Parliament is a rotten place. It’s full of former prime ministers being paid up to £200 million for nebulous “business advice” to failed businesses; former ministers spending their time representing offshore tax havens rather than their constituents; and, most disgustingly, MPs cynically using the murder of one of their colleagues to argue that they shouldn’t have to disclose their shady expenses claims.

But just ten minutes’ walk down Victoria Street in London is another, thoroughly more banal form of sleaze. It may not have the glitz and glamour of the British Virgin Islands, and rather fewer Russian oligarchs grace its halls. But local government planning permission is the bread and butter of corruption in the UK. The current incarnation of the Labour Party will never act on it, because too many of its councillors have their own conflicts of interest. And Westminster City Hall is its sordid epicenter.

To state the obvious: local government is a decidedly boring topic. This boredom is precisely what allows its conflicts of interest to hide in plain sight. There is almost no effective oversight of councils. The collapse of local media, and the hollowing out of the national media in cut after cut after cut, means these conflicts of interest are almost never covered. Most people don’t know who their councillors are and simply treat local elections as an opinion poll about the national leadership. In major cities, where it’s common for the young and poor to move every year, the problem is even worse — and it’s compounded by the fact that each move requires people to reregister to vote or be disenfranchised.