It is 18 months since the self-styled Queen of the High Street dramatically took to a stage in Westminster to deliver her plans to save Britain’s shops.

Today came the much-delayed government verdict on the often rollercoaster ride that’s followed since then.

Love them or hate them, the most tangible result of Mary Portas’ review was the creation of the so-called Portas Pilots, later followed by an army of slightly less well-funded but equally well-intentioned town teams across the country.

Before the pilots launched last year, then housing and local government minister Grant Shapps, a true Willy Wonker, said the pilots represented the “vanguard of a high-street revolution” and were getting the equivalent of a “golden ticket” to transform their ailing high streets.

Subsequently the process of bidding for the funding sparked a scramble on YouTube not dissimilar to something out of Britain’s Got Talent, but in some cases with even worse singing, and considerably less talent.

The pilots have been trialling ideas – some of them bold, some of them barmy – backed by up to £100,000 of taxpayers’ cash apiece, but until fairly recently there has been little in the way of strategic backing from the government. Today Shapps’ replacement, Mark Prisk, was much less effusive about the intended role of the pilots, which he admitted – surprise, surprise – had had very mixed results.

The pilots have been trialling ideas – some of them bold, some of them barmy – but until fairly recently there has been little in the way of strategic backing from the government

Prisk concluded the pilots “are not and never were designed to be the solution to the high street”.

Some have made great progress – none more so than Bedminster, which has established a Business Improvement District of 450 businesses in just over a year. Yet some of the case studies described in today’s report are terribly lame.

Dartford is name-checked for its recognition of talented and enthusiastic employees in a partnership with Bluewater to train up retailers – but strangely there is no mention of the fact it spent a big chunk of its money on a Peppa Pig impersonator.

Prisk snorts at criticism of the fact that many of the other pilots and town teams have shown a reluctance to spend money that the Chancellor George Osborne would kill for in his ministerial departments.

“These are long-term projects and teams are taking a strategic approach… many of which are not quick fixes,” he said, adding “the government supports this approach rather than encouraging them to spend it as quickly as they can”.

But Freedom of Information requests seen by The Grocer reveal that while the minister talks about “long-term projects” and prescribes patience, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has been desperately trying to get town teams and pilots to come up with evidence of how they have been spending the cash.

Towns were given a deadline of yesterday to report on their spending and describe how it fitted in with the “Portas action plan”. They were told this would be monitored every two months from now on - this from the same DCLG that in previous correspondence said there would be no monitoring at all of how they spent their funding.

It is more evidence the DCLG realises it seriously misjudged its handling of this affair. But take the blame? Of course not.

In a spectacular case of stating the obvious, today’s report warns that having a “just do it” philosophy, as demonstrated by the pilots, is not enough to have an impact on towns. They need governance, structure and well thought-through funding plans, it says.

What a shame it has taken 18 months for the government to come round to this simple conclusion – 18 months during which the serious issues raised in Portas’ report have been sidelined by a sideshow.

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