Leader of the Council Claire Kober profiled by The Guardian

As leaps into the deep end go, there are few bigger than this, at least in local government. Last December, at the age of 30 and with just two years' experience as a councillor under her belt, Claire Kober was elected leader of Haringey council in north London. At the time, the council – no stranger to controversy at the best of times – was facing perhaps its biggest crisis. Media hysteria over its role in the Baby Peter case was at its height. The children's secretary, Ed Balls, had notoriously intervened to remove Sharon Shoesmith, Haringey's director of children's services, and Kober's predecessor, George Meehan, had fallen on his sword. Within a week, the council had formally sacked Shoesmith at a hastily arranged disciplinary meeting. The next day, Kober took political charge of a council on the verge of a nervous breakdown, its child protection service in meltdown and staff morale in freefall.