In June his team threatened legal action against sportswear giant Nike for having used the East London borough’s ‘H’ logo for its grass-roots football campaign without permission. This culminated in a £300,000 out-of-court settlement in September.

In July, prior to his appointment as the 2006-07 chair of the 450-member Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors, Sullivan-Gould began talks to forge a brand-new qualification for lawyers specialising in local government work

The qualification promises to revolutionise the way local government specialists are hired and promoted; it has already won the support of local government law chiefs at firms such as Bevan Brittan, Pinsent Masons and Trowers & Hamlins.

In September Hackney assembled a panel of barristers, becoming the first local authority in the UK to do so. And in December Sullivan-Gould was assigned to help the heads of the Five Borough Central Team for the 2012 Olympics to form a governing structure for the new organisation.