WHEN Copeland Council’s chief executive attended the first of a round of interviews that secured her the top job, she was due to give birth.

But determined not to miss the opportunity, Pat Graham caught the train down to Leeds where the candidates were being vetted.

She had already made the council aware of her condition, but members of the panel were taken aback over just how far along she was.

When invited to the interview, the 46-year-old mother-of-three recalls: “I started to say to them ‘Yes, but I’m pregnant’ but because of legislation protecting women from discrimination, they didn’t let me finish the sentence and said: ‘We can’t possibly discriminate’.

“I went on the train by myself and I walked in the room and when they saw the size of me, the officers said: ‘We need to get you out of here as soon as possible’.”

Because her daughter was born nine days late, Pat managed to finish the interviews required for the senior post.

But during the final stage of the process, someone passed out in the atrium of council headquarters in the Copeland Building because of the heat.

And when the ambulance came, everyone automatically assumed that she had gone into labour.

Originally from Cleator Moor, Pat attended St Patrick’s Junior School in Cleator Moor and St Benedict’s Catholic High School in Whitehaven.

She attended Manchester University where she completed a degree in town and country planning followed by a second degree in planning.

Pat attributes her interest in and the machinery of local government to the influence of her family.

One of her relatives was a chairman of planning at Copeland council, while her parents were both passionate about Georgian Whitehaven and the architecture of the town.

“I think I fell in love with town planning because of my love of Whitehaven, the first planned town,” she says.

While still at school, she did work experience at the council and met several people she now works alongside.

Her first job was as an assistant planner at Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council, and she later joined Durham County Council as a senior planner. She then went on to Teesdale District Council as strategic planning manager where she also took on strategic housing responsibilities.

During a local government reorganisation, she saw a job advertised in Copeland, wondered if it was “fate” and decided to apply.

Pat insists she hasn’t encountered a ‘glass ceiling’ on her rise to the top, though she has been on the receiving end of some casual sexism.

She adds: “I don’t feel personally I have ever been held back because I’m a female. I think coming from a town planning background where you are working with developers and quite male-dominated areas, you just get used to that (working alongside men).

“But my focus is always on getting the job done. Although I have experienced and been aware of sexism it’s not a game I play. I’m looking at getting the best for Copeland.”

As a council, Copeland is focussed on employing the best candidate for the job rather than on achieving rigid gender quotas.

And while the authority does indeed have more male employees, it has a greater number of women in senior position which means that female staff earn more on average.

Asked what makes a good chief executive, she says: “Passion for the place, commitment to the people and service delivery.  You need to be resilient, decent and to enjoy finding solutions to problems because that’s a big part of the role.

“Problems, issues, challenges present themselves. You have got to be someone who thrives in that environment and can make decisions – and live with them.”

The council has overcome some major challenges with Pat at the helm.

The authority was hit by a devastating cyber attack in August 2016, which brought the council to its knees and cost it about £2m.

And on top of that, it has also seen a 99 per cent cut in Government funding in the last five years as austerity continues to bite – slashed from £3.3million in 2015 to just £30,000 in 2020.

Yet greater challenges lie ahead for the region including that massive changes to the nuclear industry that come with the end of re-processing and the overall focus decommissioning at Sellafield.

The economy is dependent on this major employer, but the future of the industry remains uncertain with the collapse of the Moorside project.

However, some hopes for nuclear new build have been revived with the expected Government announcement that Cumbria will be home to new miniature modular reactors.

But in the midst of all these challenges, the council has achieved much success including its flagship strategy for helping the survivors of domestic abuse.

Pat says: “I am so proud that we help women and men in their hour of need who are victims of domestic abuse.

“When people need help, we are there for them. And people have said to us ‘You have saved our life’

Along with Cumbria’s first elected mayor Mike Starkie, she is leading the commercialisation of the authority which will help it continue to deliver services for its residents.

The council is now managed more more like a business as it seeks to get a bigger return on its assets to generate a “cash surplus” to reinvest in the area.

She says: “Several years of austerity have left us with very little working capital to deliver what we want to deliver, but I really do believe that we are moving into a space where we just have to do it a different way.

“We have got to have service delivery, not just within the council but the public sector has to be looked at from the other end of the telescope.

“It can’t just be about trying to the same with less. We need to move the model a bit and that’s not necessarily local government re-organisation. It’s about looking at it from the customer perspective and service-user.

“The challenge is, continuously to make things better, to make our services better and stronger, to look after the people that need us, to fulfil out statutory obligations when we haven’t got any spare capital.”

Underneath her obvious passion for the area and professionalism is a family woman who enjoys nothing more than being at home with her husband and children. When not running the council, she is most likely to be found tending to her chickens or walking the countryside in her wellies with her two cocker spaniels.

She tells me the dogs’ names – Pippin and Harper – but not those of her husband or children.

Pat is keen to keep the details of her family life private for personal and professional reasons.

She says: “I work hard and I work long hours. There’s a lot of responsibility which I take very seriously – and often that eats into weekends.

“My time is precious and when I’m not in meetings or in the office, I really just love being at home with my family.

“Your kids just see you as ‘mum’ and when you’ve come through the door, and my 15-year-old son recently said to me ‘What exactly is it you do again?’”