Longstanding chief executive Gordon Mitchell has been in the business long enough to joke that he has ‘already retired three times.'

After interim stints at Tewkesbury and Great Yarmouth BCs, Calderdale MBC and Oxford City he has now taken on the challenge of turning round troubled Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. In its short life since it was set up in 2017 the authority has already made history, first for covering a non-metropolitan area across mixed tiers and next becoming the first combined authority to incur external intervention.