I arrived as city director in Stoke-on-Trent in February 2020, just six weeks before the first pandemic lockdown. When I arrived, the council was already financially broke.

My first act, working with the then leader of the council, was to secure a capitalisation directive from government to allow a balanced budget for the following year to be set and stave off a section 114 notice. Children's services were on their knees, having received an appalling Ofsted report a year earlier, and adult services had undergone little of the modernisation seen in most other authorities, meaning that far too many working age and older adults were in institutional care.