Brian Moran first walked through the doors of the offices of Greater Manchester housing association County Palatine as a policy and research manager in 2000.

Did he think he’d rise to the role of chief executive in the same organisation, now massively expanded through mergers and known as Jigsaw, 23 years later? In a word, no.

Moran had never had himself down as being a particularly ambitious type.

However, he has cunningly been following a strategy he picked up in the 1990s while at Blackpool housing association Wyre (now part of Regenda). His role at the time involved reviewing directors’ CVs and he noticed that “they had all changed their jobs quite a lot in the early part of their careers, every two years or so”.