Big interview: Stick with your gut instinct

If he had listened to the warnings he'd been given, Steve Sipple would not have joined Tower Hamlets council five years ago.

"People said, 'don't go, it's dire,'" he explains. "At the time, we had the lowest ratio of qualified staff, there was no training and people weren't properly supervised." But Sipple was impressed by what he heard during his interview for the job, and decided to take on the challenge.

"They were desperate for change and improvement," he says.

Fast forward to 2006, and Sipple says progress has been made. "Even though the service was poor in 2001 we were well funded and budgets have increased year after year," he says. Sipple highlights the success of the council's "programme of mobile youth provision", which includes hi-tech mobile vehicles - converted lorries - that offer music and IT facilities, among others, to young people living on estates in the borough. "It's gone down really well," he says.