There’s a full stop at the end of this post. It will be the last one I write as a lattepapa. All good things must come to an end.

You might have noticed that my blogging has slowed down a bit in recent months and my tweets tailed off a few weeks ago. The reason for the first bit of this is because I have been spending more time with my daughter (whose naps have reduced dramatically in the last 6 months) and also -after nearly 2 years as a lattepapa- looking to return to work. I have now been offered a role at the Regulator of Social Housing. Whilst here isn’t the place to talk about what I’ll be doing, I hope this role will allow me to contribute to the Regulator and benefit social housing tenants and the sector as a whole.

Blogging was always intended to be a temporary activity; a normally reticent (and effectively politically restricted) policy professional sticking my head out of the parapet for a while and engaging with a wider group of people than I would have been able to whilst in full time work. What I wanted to provide was a nuanced view of the world from someone who has dealt with political reality and its implications, whilst still holding the view that policy is the important bit. Trying to ignore neither politics nor policy is a balancing act, especially when you can never know in advance how each is going to affect the other. I hope in the blog I have been able to tease out these ambiguities whilst at the same time consider what is happening in policy right now.

It has been good to enter into many conversations with people from across the policy world and political spectrum. Setting out to critique rather than criticise was always my intention and finding a niche for myself amongst so many excellent thinkers, writers and do-ers was an exciting thing to achieve. As I move forward to the next step in life I will be able to draw on this experience and expect I will run into many people I’ve met here for the first time.

On a practical level, I’m going to keep this blog up but not update it, so it will be a record of this period and my detailed thoughts on policy will remain up for the long run. I’m going to deactiviate my twitter account shortly, so my tweets will disappear. I do have a personal twitter account @philipgowenlock, but will be using this for hobbies and my social life. Whilst I may follow people through this account it will be to listen rather than engage (sorry!).

The archive is available here and I will still be contactable if anyone needs to speak to me, just not in the ways that have become second nature in these last couple of years.

Thank you to everyone who has engaged, who has read this blog and thought about what I have to say. It has been fun, but now it is time to say hej då.

So that’s it. Here comes the full stop.