Tower Hamlets LBC is a council full of contradictions. The east London Borough, with some of the most deprived wards in the country, is also home to Canary Wharf – one of the fastest growing developments in the country. The gleaming towers house some of London's most successful and powerful businesses – with some of the highest earners.

Martin Smith, the new chief executive of Tower Hamlets is all too aware of the contradiction.

It doesn't stop there. Where everyone else is struggling to encourage members who are not ageing white men, Tower Hamlets has a collection of ethnically diverse councillors, of all ages.

 The strong Bangladeshi community is well represented on the council. There are perhaps not as many women on the council as you would chose for perfect diversity, but then you can't have everything.

Martin himself is a bit of a departure from the norm for the council. He is the first male chief executive after a long line of ladies. His most recent predecessor, Christine Gilbert, left to head up Ofsted.

When he left school, Martin thought he would like to ‘do something in engineering'. Instead he trained as an accountant in local government – and like most public sector accountants is effusive about the quality of training he got.

He joined Redbridge LBC under the then chief executive Michael Frater – who now heads up Nottingham City Council.

But the East End boy – and West Ham supporter – returned to his roots in Tower Hamlets as director of resources. After Ms Gilbert's departure last year he took on the top job, initially on an acting basis for three months, before being appointed in the spring. Just four weeks into post he became ‘one of the most experienced chief executives in East London' after the retirement of the chief executives of Hackney and Newham LBC – Penny Thompson and Dave Burbage – were announced within days of each other, and Waltham Forest continued to search for a new boss.

He says the office he moved into when he was acting chief executive gave a good insight into the whole of Tower Hamlets. A window at one end of the room looked out over marshland and what is locally called the ‘Becton Alps'. 

On the other side of the room, a second window looked out towards Canary Wharf in the distance, with its development and the knowledge economy of the future. In the foreground Robin Hood Gardens, a deprived housing estate and East India dock, a symbol of the past economy of the area.

He is very obviously a huge fan of the area, and excited by the ‘exhilarating combination of challenge and reward' his role will offer.
He claims it is ‘already a model for what living in a world class city can be'. And there is more to come.

Tower Hamlets is providing good services. It has a four-star rating, and Audit Commission chairman Michael O'Higgins raved about its education service in some of his early speeches.

The latest staff survey shows three-quarters of the staff are proud to tell people they work for the council, and 85% know how their role contributes to what the council is trying to achieve.

But despite this, the council doesn't appear to get the reputation and recognition it deserves. When I mention this, Martin seems shocked. His love affair with Tower Hamlets has perhaps blinded him to the fact that not everyone sees what he sees.
Perhaps it is because he is new to the job, but he doesn't necessarily have the same view of other things either.

He is sceptical about shared services – ‘I don't necessarily think shared services means saved money – although it might do' – but supportive of Performance Indicators – ‘I like them. I want more'.

Most of all, he wants to make the area a better place for people to live – and he doesn't think the CPA score has any bearing on that.