My recent appointment as part time, interim chief operating officer for the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), alongside and on top of my substantive appointment as chief executive at Sandwell Council, is an example of the changing and ever-more demanding role of local authority chief executives.

Martin Reeves, the chief executive at Coventry City Council, and I will be working together. Martin will be interim chief executive of WMCA, focusing on the vision for a new kind of strategic authority, while I concentrate on the immediate challenge of beginning to deliver on a range of commitments to help enliven the regional economy and reform public services under the banner of an organisation that will not come into statutory existence until May or June this year and with very few of the established systems, processes and resources that we are normally able to call upon in our home authorities, even in these times of austerity.