“I think there are many parallels between karate and leadership. You know, it’s about continuous improvement, never giving up if something is so important to you, it’s about perseverance. It’s about learning from mistakes….”

Chan Kataria is pondering life after he stands down as chief executive of EMH Group at the end of this week. He is looking forward to having a bit more time to excel at karate, read books and travel the world with his wife Chrissy. This is in between doing non-exec work of course, more on which later.

One of social housing’s most-well known and charismatic leaders, Kataria agrees to share his reflections with Housing Today about his four-decade housing career, what’s next and where he sees the sector currently.

We meet Kataria in EMH’s offices in the Leicestershire town of Coalville. The area, as the town’s name suggests, is a former mining town - indeed EMH’s offices and the buildings surrounding it were built on an ex-colliery site.