Tank commander

"He's not a Blairite," says a colleague and indeed for Pearce, it's back to basics: affordability, enhanced supply, fairness. For him, housing is part of the fairness agenda. "We have got to keep focused on the goal of social justice," he says – so, 13 or so years on, the IPPR is going to rethink the commission on social justice instigated by former Labour leader John Smith.

Pearce used to be a special adviser to home secretary David Blunkett before joining the IPPR full-time in 2003. Now, he wants to "embed progressive change in wider society". He doesn't quite use the word "realist" to describe his political outlook but does cite his experience of the "relentless" pace of life when he was advising Blunkett and says he is glad to have had to confront the constraints of being in government.

Equality and justice are central concerns and, on housing, Pearce seems content for the time being for the IPPR's profile to be etched by Chris Holmes, the former Shelter director who is leading its research programme part time. He approves of Holmes' emphases on improving equality of access to housing and expanding the choice of the have-nots, set out in the Housing, Equality and Choice pamphlet last year.

But while Holmes is an enthusiast for mixed-tenure developments and the break-up of the council monoliths, Pearce appears keen on local authority involvement in housing: he leaps to the defence of Lambeth, his home borough, as a landlord and an instigator of community development.

He doesn't sound like an enthusiast for stock transfer.

Pearce has a strong interest in sustainability, too, and there may be internal arguments down the road on the IPPR's attitude towards greenfield construction, which Holmes advocates.

Above all, Pearce is going to insist that IPPR thinking is founded on high-grade research. A recent job advert for the director of strategy in a Whitehall department repeated the word "strategy" 15 times; with Pearce, there's another word that gets repeated. It's "rigour". Whether it's housing, sustainability, regionalism or social justice, Pearce wants the IPPR's work to be distinguished by its sharpness.

Someone to consolidate
Perhaps that is a coded way for Pearce to distinguish his tenure from that of his predecessor Matthew Taylor, who left last autumn to take charge of writing Labour's general election manifesto. Son of Laurie Taylor, the voice of 1960s sociology, Matthew is a tough act to follow, says Pearce. He was "restless, innovative, etched a high profile".

One of Taylor's former colleagues says: "Taylor was a media tart, great for the IPPR's reputation, full of ideas, unpredictable, good for growing an organisation; but by the time he'd been here five years, we needed someone to consolidate."

That's Pearce. He arrived last autumn as deputy to Taylor, then became acting director before taking on the job permanently in February – and avows to have no political ambitions of his own. He sees his task at the IPPR as keeping the research flowing, making the weather in the "climate of ideas". He intends the IPPR to be "sensible, progressive, contributing on the basis of rigour" – that word again – wedded neither to the Labour party nor to the Blair government.

The IPPR was launched by Lord Hollick in 1988, long before New Labour was born, and it intends to be around after Tony Blair (or Gordon Brown, for that matter) has left office. Sue Regan, formerly responsible for social policy and housing at the IPPR and now policy director for Shelter, hopes Pearce's big contribution will be to "make IPPR essential, building a consensus around the usefulness of think tanks; we really do need more progressive thinking out there and few do it as well as IPPR".

So, what does Pearce think about one of this spring's buzzwords in New Labour circles: "choice" – as in giving the public more choice in health, education and social housing? "It's a difficult issue," he says.

"The IPPR has pioneered looking at giving poor people more ownership and more control over assets – for example, the baby bonds idea which the government has now taken up. We'd want to research how to extend choice before adopting a particular position." What about more choice in housing, for example by expanding owner occupation among poorer tenants? "We'd want to look at whether people do want it."

His personal plan at the IPPR is to "refresh policy debate by introducing new voices". Indeed, if his predecessor put his colleagues in something of a shadow, Pearce seems happy for a large and rather inchoate team to get on with things.

On housing, Holmes will be principal thinker at least until a successor to Sue Regan arrives. Meanwhile, there is a flurry of related work on sustainability, communities and affordability (an IPPR commission on the future of the South-east is about to be set up). Pearce has also assembled an international panel on climate change including Clive Hamilton, the controversial Australian author of Growth Fetish. "We are not a Fordist supplier of policy ideas for government," asserts Pearce. "There has to be a balance between producing ideas and testing and challenging government policy."

If his overall ambition is to "embed progressive change" in society, democratic renewal and "pushing on in a democratic, pluralist direction" are part of that.

As well as his evidently strong belief in local government, he displays a healthy scepticism about benefit withdrawal as a means of reducing antisocial behaviour. Instead, he talks warmly about asset-based welfare, but stops short of going as far as Alan Milburn in suggesting the free transfer of social rented homes to their tenants. For all his youth, under Nick Pearce the IPPR is going to be a cautious place – but firmly anchored to what some may see as Old Labour values.