It is safe to say Dawn Carter-McDonald has seen it all in her time at Hackney LBC. She arrived in 2000 as a solicitor for the children's, education and communities service and within months the London borough was served with a section 114 – at a time when such a thing was rare.

Last year, just weeks after she became chief executive, the elected mayor was suspended by the Labour party and subsequently resigned. ‘It was quite an unsettling time,' Carter-McDonald admits.