At various points in my career I have held jobs that have seen me play leading roles in both sector-led improvement, as well as in providing advice to ministers inside Government on engagement and intervention with what were deemed to be poorly-performing councils.

I was thinking about this the other day as I realised it was 15 years to the very week that I became embroiled in one particular authority that was as much a cause célèbre of those days as the ones that have hit the headlines in recent weeks.