Few people, let alone social services directors, have ever headed out in the middle of the night in search of parts for a combine harvester. But then, few directors help run a 300-acre farm in their spare time, as Celia Pyke-Lees does.

Years of working with her husband on their farm has given Pyke-Lees, who has just left running Lambeth social services department for a newly created post as director of services at the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, a refreshing perspective.

Pyke-Lees sees one similarity between running a social services department and farming: deep financial problems. In the past, she has been no stranger to getting by on limited resources. Pyke-Lees jokes that her two children began selling Christmas trees while in their prams and, to this day, the whole family goes out flogging spruces in the run-up to the festive season.

Living on a farm also makes this social services director remarkably flexible; she is used to changing her plans depending on uncertain factors, such as the weather. Farming is also about making the most of limited opportunities: "You have got to move very fast: the seed that is put in the right ground will do better," she says.

Pyke-Lees describes her career path as "typically female". She did not follow the traditional route of starting in a local authority and working her way up. "I would never have dreamed in a million years that I would be a director of social services," she says.

A Londoner born and bred, Pyke-Lees describes herself as "very inner London", and enjoys working in multi-cultural areas. Her first job was working for the Community Relations Commission, one of the organisations that merged into the Commission for Racial Equality. She says she was drawn to this sort of work because she "wanted to make a difference".

Then she moved to a community health council before crossing over to health service management. Some might view this as a difficult transition - from poacher to gamekeeper - but for Pyke-Lees it was a challenge. "The things I had fought for as secretary of the community health council were then on my desk."

She has only fond memories of her time in the health service. "There were just loads of lovely, committed people interested in health."

After rising to managerial level, she took a new turn and headed off to Greenwich social services department to take up the assistant director's job. Although she noticed a number of culture differences between working for a health service and for a local authority, she believes many commonly held assumptions are exaggerated.

After just two years in the post, she was promoted to director and stayed a further four before moving to a larger inner city authority - Lambeth.

She arrived at the London borough to face £16 million in cuts and 500 staff leaving their jobs. Yet she saw the mammoth task ahead as an opportunity to be tackled creatively. As the council turned into an example of New Labour-style local government, Pyke-Lees turned the department round. Lambeth is now underspending and this year it even cut its council tax.

"It is a wonderful place to work," she says. "Lambeth as a whole has got very committed members. Everyone accepts that Lambeth has to improve and people are open about which way we should do it."

Pyke-Lees finds something positive even in the most daunting of tasks. "The plus side about cuts is that you can make enormous changes," she says. "It's much harder to do so in a don't-move, don't-change-anything kind of a place."

After more than three years in the Lambeth director's chair, she has decided to seek pastures new. "I had been a director and managed budgets for nine years. You feel if you are director in one place for too long, you will start to accept things, saying 'That's how we do it here'. You need to keep changing it."

Pyke-Lees is keen to move on. "I like change; I like change agendas," she says. "I do not want to be bored." She reckons she will "never have a boring moment" in her new job at NACAB, which is undergoing a major reassessment.

Sitting still certainly seems to be anathema to Pyke-Lees. Apart from running social services departments, helping out on the farm and raising two children, she still finds time to grab a friend for the occasional cultural blitz on London and blitz it certainly is - typically two art exhibitions, a film and a theatre show in one day. Pyke-Lees regrets not being able to indulge herself more but has resigned herself to the fact that, if you are going to make a difference, it is going to take up a lot of your time.

Profile by Rachel Downey