Local government still has a long way to go on diversity. In 2017, 78% of council employees were women, but only 33% were chief executives. Just 33% of councillors are female, as are 17% of council leaders. Ethnic diversity is even worse, with just 4% of male and 2% of women councillors being non-white, not to mention the under-representation of other aspects of diversity which are less immediately visible: sexuality, disability and different socio-economic backgrounds.

Local government is not alone in its struggle: almost all large organisations across all sectors must grapple with diversity at a senior level. Current affairs programmes still have a ratio of almost three men to every woman featured as experts, there are more men called Dave than there are women leading companies in the FTSE 100 and the national gender pay gap sits at 18.4%