Back in the days before the pandemic hit, local government was facing a crisis: a housing crisis. The Government's big priority for the sector was to tackle it, to build more homes and house the nation.

Nick Walkley, the then chief executive of Homes England, sat right in the centre of that drive. Appointed in 2017 to what was at the time the Homes and Communities Agency, he was a former council chief executive with experience of frontline delivery, someone who could see the problems from all sides.