Sorting out rows over hospital ward closures while implementing a new commissioning role for the council is all in a day's work for Joanne Roney as Michael Burton discovers.

When I arrived on January 20 to interview Wakefield City Council's chief executive Joanne Roney she had just emerged from dealing with a crisis involving the local health trust, the Shadow home secretary and a bizarre plan to draft in the army to run a hospital's A and E department.