Advisory Board

The advisory board includes representatives from our founder sponsors and other partner organisations with an interest in public scrutiny.

 

 Rt Hon Nick Raynsford MP, Chair

Nick Raynsford has been the Member of Parliament for Greenwich and Woolwich since 1997 (Greenwich 1992-1997). He joined the Government in 1997 and held responsibility for housing, planning and construction as well as being Minister for London. He was Minister for Local and Regional Government in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister from 2001 to 2005. He was made a privy councillor in the 2001 New Year’s Honours. He left the Government in 2005.
He was Shadow Minister for Housing and Construction from 1994 and front bench spokesperson for London from 1993. He was a member of the Environment Select Committee from 1992 to 1993.

He was Member of Parliament for Fulham from 1986 to1987 and was a councillor for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham from 1971 to 1975.

He was Director of SHAC, the London Housing Aid Centre from 1976 to 1986, and Director of Raynsford & Morris Housing Consultants from 1987 to 1992.

Nick Raynsford is Chairman of the Construction Industry Council and a Vice President of the Town and Country Planning Association. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He is President of the Labour Housing Group and Chairman of the NHBC Foundation, the Fire Protection Association Council and the London Open House Supporters at Large Group. He is a Non-executive Director of Rockpools and of Hometrack.  Nick Raynsford replaced Dr Tony Wright MP as CfPS Chair in 2007.

 

Jennette Arnold AM
Deputy Chair of the London Assembly

Jennette Arnold  now serves as Deputy Chair.  She was elected  to the Greater London Authority in 2000 and in 2008  to 2009 was elected as Chair of the London Assembly. She chaired the Mayor’s Cultural Strategy, which contained the Mayor’s pledge to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to London. She also chaired the London Health Commission and campaigned successfully for national legislation to ensure a smoke-free London.

Jennette’s other political offices include membership of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the UK delegation on the EU Committee of the Regions.

In April 2008 Jennette was appointed by the Prime Minister as a Governor on the Board of the Museum of London. She is currently a council member of the Royal Court Theatre and Governor of Sadler’s Wells Theatre Foundation. She is patron of the Victoria Climbie Foundation and former Chair of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust.

Jennette’s first career was in nursing, subsequently becoming a Senior Officer of the Royal College of Nursing. Her first elected position was in 1992 as a local councillor in Islington.

This year Jennette was listed in the top 50 of Britain's most powerful black women, published by New Nation and among the Evening Standard’s list of the 1000 most influential Londoners.

Jennette was born in Montserrat, West Indies. Her extended family lives there and in the UK.



Andrew Bacon
Independent Trustee

Andrew currently holds the responsibility for strategic development in BT for its UK local government partnerships while sitting on the board of many of the joint ventures between BT and local authorities.

Andrew is also the Regional Director for BT in the East Midlands and chairs the East Midlands Regions Board. Andrew sits on the Greenest County Think Tank in Suffolk chaired by the Suffolk Strategic Partnership and is a private sector sponsor of numerous Third Sector social enterprises. Andrew is also a member of the Suffolk Collaborative – a partnership formed across all sectors absorbing within it the SSP and the CEO group across the public sector in Suffolk.

Andrew is a member of the De Montfort University Business Advisory Panel, and a member of the CBI Council for the East Midlands. Andrew represents BT on the CBI Local Government Panel. Andrew is a non-executive director on the board of the Leicester and Leicestershire Economic Development Company – Prospect Leicestershire. Andrew is also a member of the Advisory Board for Business in the Community.

Andrew graduated from Leicester in 1987, and has since held senior management and executive roles across the private and public sector for over 22 years. Having worked for Lucas, Honda, United Technologies, KPMG, EDS and BT, Andrew acquired skills and experience in designing and leading organisational transformation through partnership and collaboration working in over twenty countries around the world.


Cllr Malcolm Brain
Representative from National O/S Forum

   

Vicki Lawson-Brown
Independent Trustee 

Vicki is a qualified and registered social worker, family therapist, educator, linguist, mediator, and is studying law; she is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. She has experience in local authority social services, child and adolescent psychiatry, universities, social care regulators and high-profile public sector organisations. She now acts as a consultant specialising in administrative justice, education, mediation, complaints and conduct investigation and has carried out investigations for a number of public bodies including Standards for England, the Office of the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Commission for Social Care Inspection. She currently acts as Ombudsman for the European Patents Office adjudicating on Dignity at Work cases in Munich, Berlin, Vienna and The Hague. Vicki works as a part-time Regional Inspector with the General Social Care Council and for many years has been an Associate Lecturer with the Open University teaching on health and social care courses.

Vicki also holds a number of portfolio roles; until recently she was Chair of Trustees for Witness, the national charity promoting safe professional boundaries and was a member of the disciplinary panel for the Council for Regulation of Forensic Practitioners. She currently holds a Ministerial Appointment as the Home Secretary’s representative for recruitment of independent members to a police authority and has been appointed to the Standards Committee of Cleveland Police Authority. She acts as a national Chair for the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service.

Following her success as BBC Supercook 1988, she was commissioned as an Egon Ronay Inspector and later by the Department of Health to work on the NHS patient experience project. Her research and publications record includes a comparison between the regulation of GPs and social workers, the role of citizens and lay persons in regulation and scrutiny and the use of apology in complaints procedures



Deborah Collins
CfPS Company Secretary

 Deborah is the Strategic Director of Communities, Law & Governance at the London Borough of Southwark.  Her role encompasses the whole range of engagement between the council and the community, from informal links with particular communities and the VCS at one end of the spectrum to being responsible for the formal committee structures of the council at the other end.  Her team supports elected members in all their roles, and includes a thriving scrutiny function.  In addition she is the Council's monitoring officer, responsible for all the legal services to the Council, and its returning officer.  She also holds the ethical governance portfolio for ACSeS.

Deborah joined Southwark in March 2007 having spent the previous 15 years in central government.  She worked in a number of departments over this time, with a focus on regulatory and European law.  When she left Government she was one of the two legal directors at HMRC, responsible for creating a unified legal service from the previous Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise legal teams.



Jim Clifford
Independent Trustee

With nearly thirty years’ experience in charity management and advisory work, as well as wider commercial and financial sector professional work, Jim is now head of Charity and Education Advisory work at leading sector advisors Baker Tilly, and chairs their Public Sector Group.  His professional work has included guiding organisations through times of change including merger, restructuring, refinancing and strategic change.  Current and former projects have included the restructuring of Thamesmead Town post GLC, the merger of Henley Management College with Reading University, the forming of the Quality Improvement Agency and LSN out of the Learning and Skills Development Agency, and the three way merger of FE colleges to form the new Leeds City College. A chartered accountant by training, he is also qualified in tax, corporate finance, insolvency, and in Charity Finance and Governance.

Jim is currently undertaking research work in the field of Charity finance and governance with Cass Business School, looking at the development of decision-making protocols for use by the sector in financial transactions.  In his private life Jim is heavily involved with developing support services and training for adoptive and foster parents, particularly around therapeutic work with very damaged and traumatised children from the care system.  This is pursued both through an involvement with National and local charities and social services departments, and through his family’s work with his nine adopted children.

Quote:  “I am delighted to have the opportunity to get involved in the CfPS, an organisation which has so much to offer at a time when we are demanding more, with higher standards, from all public services.  There is a great tradition of personal involvement in delivery of public services in this country.  CfPS can help to turn our rightful pride in that into a wiser involvement of the public in public scrutiny: surely a great goal and one I am proud to help it to pursue.”

Dan Corry

Dan Corry is Chair of the Advisers Council of the National Economic Council and Senior Policy Adviser on the Economy to the Prime Minister. He was previously the Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit after having been Chair of the Chancellors' Council of Economic Advisors. Before that he was a special advisor at DfES and DCLG as well as having been at DTI and DTLR between 1997 and 2002. From 2002 to 2005 he was Director of the New Local Government Network, voted think tank of the Year in 2004.

He began his career as an economist in the Department of Employment and the Treasury and while a civil servant was on the national executive of the civil service trade union the FDA. He headed the Labour Party Economic Secretariat between 1989 and 1992 and was Senior Economist at ippr between 1992 and 1997.

He has published widely on issues ranging from utility regulation and public private partnerships, to New Localism and football. He was a member of the Financial Advisory Committee of the FA and is on the advisory Board of the Centre for Public Scrutiny.




Andrew Cozens
Director - Strategy, Information and Development, IDeA

ANDREW COZENS CBE is Strategic Adviser (Children, Adults and Health Services) for the Improvement and Development Agency for local government. In this role he advises central and local government and partner agencies in relation to children’s services, adult social care, public health and local government’s relationship with the NHS.

Before joining IDeA in 2006, he spent ten years as director of social services in Gloucestershire and Leicester City, and also had a short spell in 2005 as director of education and lifelong learning in Leicester. He also was Deputy Chief Executive for Leicester City Council from 2001-5. Prior to that he worked in the statutory and voluntary sector in North Yorkshire and Birmingham.

He was President of the Association of Directors of Social Services (ADSS) in 2003/4.  He is an adviser to the Local Government Association, the Welsh Social Services Improvement Agency, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and a Vice Chair of Trustees of the Princess Royal Trust for Carers.

He received a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2004 in recognition of his contribution to social work.

Professor Colin Crouch
Warwick Business School

Professor Colin Crouch is Professor of Governance and Public Management at Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick.  He is also the External Scientific member of the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Research at Cologne.  He previously taught sociology at the LSE, and was fellow and tutor in politics at Trinity College, Oxford, and professor of sociology at the University of Oxford.  Until December 2004 he was professor of sociology at the European University Institute, Florence.

He is chairman, and former joint editor, of The Political Quarterly, and immediate past-president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).  He has published within the fields of comparative European sociology and industrial relations, on economic sociology, and on contemporary issues in British and European politics.  He is currently studying processes of institutional innovation in the economy and in public policy. His most recent books include: (edited, with Streeck, W.) Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: The Future of Capitalist Diversity (1997); Are Skills the Answer? (with David Finegold and Mari Sako, 1999); Social Change in Western Europe (1999); (with others) Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise (2001); Postdemocrazia (2003) (in English as Post-Democracy (2004)); and (with others) Changing Governance of Local Economies: Response of European Local Production Systems (2004); Recombinant Governance and Institutional Entrepreneurs (2005).

Christine Durance
Head of Policy Development, Unison

Mark Ewbank
INLOGOV

Mark Ewbank is currently a tutor and ESRC doctoral candidate within the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham; undertaking research into the effects of the separation of powers in local government on political party groups since the introduction of the Local Government Act 2000.  Before embarking on this research, Mark was employed by the Centre for Public Scrutiny between 2006 & 2007, having an opportunity to research and write publications for the Centre’s research portfolio. Prior to the CfPS, Mark undertook a BA in Economics, Politics and International Studies subsequently followed by an MA in Politics; both at the University of Warwick.

Mark currently teaches undergraduate classes on British Central and Local Government and our postgraduate Oversight and Scrutiny module (specifically the origins of the separation of powers and party conflict) within the department and undertakes more broad research into party group competition and behaviour beyond his doctoral research. Mark is also the convenor for the inaugural European Graduate Conference on Political Parties in 2009.

Mark has taken a visiting fellowship at the Institutt for Sammenliknende politikk and Rokkansenteret at the University of Bergen between April and May 2009.

Professor Derek Gardiner

Professor Derek Gardiner has worked across Whitehall, in the Departments of Health, Trade & Industry and Environment. He also held senior posts in the NHS. He was Head of Strategy and Performance in the London Borough of Greenwich (2003-6), Head of Adult Services in Lewisham (2006-7) and Assistant Executive Director in Barnsley (2007-8).
Derek has maintained independent academic and consultancy work throughout his working life. He is currently Visiting Professor of Health and Social Care at the University of Greenwich, and is Director of a public sector consulting company. Recently he has carried out an independent serious case review following a Coroner’s Court decision to issue a local authority a letter under Rule 43.
Previous consultancy work has included strategic advice to a number of local authorities and health economies, advice to the Welsh Assembly on health and social care research, and advice to the Kansei Province in Western Japan on the lessons of European economic and community regeneration policy and practice.

 
Cllr Martin Heatley
Warwickshire County Council, LGA member representative

In 1993 Martin was elected onto Warwickshire County Council.
He now holds the position of Conservative shadow portfolio holder for the Environment at the County. He Chairs the Environmental and Rural Affairs Overview & Scrutiny Committee, sits on the County Waste Management Forum, and represents the County Council on the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Sub-Regional Forum.
e is Deputy Chairman of the West Midlands LGA s Improvement and Development Portfolio Management Group and sits on the West Midlands LGA Environment Committee.
He represents Warwickshire on the County Council’s Network including the Task Group for e-government.
His other Memberships include:
Member of Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Partnership Member of NARE (National Assoc. of Regional Employers) Member of West Midlands Provincial Council Member of Regionalisation panel of the WMLGA As Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, his special interests are in Waste Management and Disposal, Rural Affairs, Multi Modal studies of Transport in the region, and Economic Development and regeneration.
Martin makes regular contributions to National Farmers Union publications on topical farming subjects such as bio-diversity, rape-seed oil for internal combustion engines, Common Agricultural Policy and the charitable work of the R.A.B.I (Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institute). Martin also writes regularly in local papers about environmental matters such as winter gritting of highways, highway strategies and GM (Genetically Modified) crops.

 

Baroness Sally Hamwee
House of Lords

Sally Hamwee was Chair of the London Assembly between 2000 and 2008, in addition to being an active member of the Liberal Democrat team in the House of Lords.
Educated at Manchester High School for Girls and Girton College, Cambridge, Sally qualified as a solicitor and was for many years a partner in Clintons, the West End media and entertainment solicitors, with whom she still maintains a connection.

She was a Liberal Democrat Councillor for the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames from 1978 to 1998 and from 1986 to 1994 served as Chair of the London Planning Advisory Committee.
Sally was appointed a Life Peer in 1991 and is now Leader of the Liberal Democrat Office of the Deputy Prime Minister team in the House of Lords, prior to which she led the teams shadowing Environment, Transport & the Regions and their predecessors.

Elected to the London Assembly (which has responsibilities for scrutinising the work of the Mayor of London and investigating matters of importance to London) as a Londonwide member from May 2000 to May 2008, she was Chair of the Assembly from May 2001 to May 2002 and resumed this role in February 2003. She was also Chair of the Assembly's Budget Committee and Business Management & Appointments Committee, Deputy Chair of the Planning & Spatial Development Committee and a member of the Transport and Standards Committees.

Sally is also a Member and former Chair of the Council of Management of Refuge and a past President, now Vice-President, of the Town and Country Planning Association. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Public Scrutiny and of the Compact Advocacy Advisory Group (for the NCVO), and Joint President of the Association of London Government.

 Ian Hickman
Director, Local Government Performance and Improvement, Audit Commission

Janet Hughes
Head of Scrutiny and Investigations, London Assembly

Janet Hughes is the Head of Scrutiny for the London Assembly, the body that holds the Mayor of London to account on behalf of Londoners. She has been at the London Assembly since 2001, having worked for select committees in the House of Commons for four years prior to that. Janet has worked on a wide range of projects, including the London Assembly's review of the response to the 7 July attacks. She is particularly interested in increasing the profile and impact of public scrutiny within government and the wider public.




Mark Lowe
Corporate Policy Officer (Scrutiny) – Adur District Council and Worthing Borough Council

Mark is an experienced Scrutiny Officer practitioner with over 25 years experience in Local Government, the vast majority of which has been spent providing direct support to Councillors and managing the Overview and Scrutiny function since 2001. Mark currently manages the Overview and Scrutiny function for Adur District Council and Worthing Borough Council in West Sussex which includes the Joint Overview and Scrutiny function implemented by both Councils as part of their Partnership working. 

Mark represents the National Overview and Scrutiny Forum on the Advisory Board and is also Co-Chairman of the South East Member/Officer Scrutiny Network. 

In 2008/09 Mark worked for the Centre for Public Scrutiny on a secondment basis, assisting the Centre and the Home Office in producing the Statutory Guidance relating to crime and disorder scrutiny, providing provisional draft Good Practice Guidance on the LAA Scrutiny provisions and also providing general support to those Councillors and Officers in the UK involved in the overview and scrutiny process.

Mark is passionate about the value of public scrutiny and accountability and how they can help in the development and provision of local public services .

Rob Prideaux
Director, Parliamentary Relations, National Audit Office

 

 John Tizard
Centre for Public Service Partnerships

In January 2008 John Tizard was appointed as the first Director of the Centre for Public Service Partnerships, at the University of Birmingham.

The Centre for Public Service Partnerships is an independent academic based research centre and policy and practice institute focused in public service partnerships in the UK and internationally.

John was previously Capita Group Plc’s Group Director for Government and Business Engagement.  He was at Capita in senior positions for over ten years.

John is a member of the advisory boards for CfPS; 4Ps; SMF; and NCC; and is a member of the NHS Choices Innovation and Engagement Board. He was a member of the Advisory Panel for the Government’s Review of the Public Service Industry in 2008; and served on a Treasury advisory panel on performance management in 2007.

He is a non-executive director of Future Builders and of the Adventure Capital Fund.

Prior to joining Capita in 1997, John was Director of Strategy and Policy for Scope.
Up to 1999 John had over 18 years' experience as a county councillor including eight years as council leader. He has had board experience in the NHS; police authority; business and third sectors; and education.
John is an economics and mathematics  graduate of the London School of Economics and a Fello

Paul Wheeler
Political Skills Forum

Paul Wheeler is the founder of the Political Skills Forum. The forum will work with local councils, political parties, and national agencies to increase the profile of local political leadership and improve the skills of existing and future councillors.

Prior to this Paul was employed by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) as Assistant Director responsible for political governance issues in the Solutions directorate, which included enhancing and supporting the role of elected members in local government.

His responsibilities at the IDeA included:
the Leadership Academy for members in leadership positions sponsored by BT and now attended by over 500 leading members the Modern Members programme which has provided in house development opportunities for over 5000 members the Good Employer Award to celebrate those employers who support staff in public service a national charter for member development - the first national recognition of the role of elected members the Advanced Leadership Programme for senior managers of ambition and talent in local government sponsor of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, which exists to promote the work of scrutiny across the public sector advocate for the Diversity Programme for Black and Asian Managers in Local Government Social Services in association with the Department of Health Paul has extensive experience of local and central government as well as direct private sector management. He was selected for the ?fast track? Unilever Management Development Scheme and worked for Unilever companies in personnel management.
Paul was nominated for the Business Education Programme at the London Business School and worked for NFC during its transformation into the largest employee owned private company in the early 1980s. He has direct experience of the political process as a constituency agent. Joint Author of In Defence of Councillors, he is also a member of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister?s advisory group on political modernisation.

As a Director of the Public Policy Unit, his clients included Rolls Royce, Granada, and The World Bank. He also acted as a policy advisor to Deloitte & Touche, Public Sector Group, Shelter and the Town and Country Finance Issues Group. He has been a school governor and Board Member of One World Action. A frequent speaker at national conferences Paul is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the City of London.

 

Dr Marlene Winfield OBE
NHS Information Authority

Marlene Winfield is Director for Patients and Public at NHS Connecting for Health and a member of its Board. 

Marlene is on the NHS Direct New Media Committee and She has recently joined the funding committee of the Joseph Rowntree CharitableTrust that makes grants in the areas of power and responsibility.

Before joining the NHS, Marlene was Head of Policy Research and Strategy at the National Consumer Council, working particularly in the areas of data protection, freedom of information, and civil justice.  She advised on radical reforms to make the civil justice system more accessible to citizens.  She also chaired the Litigant Information Sub-Committee of the Civil Justice Council.  She was made an OBE in 2000 for services to civil justice reform.

Marlene was a founder and trustee of Public Concern at Work, a free legal advice centre that helps employees and employers deal with ethical dilemmas at work. The NHS is one of its biggest customers.  For ten years, she was an adviser to the UK’s biggest ethical investment funds, Friends’ Provident’s Stewardship.  For 15 years she ran a support group for women injured by a faulty contraceptive device (the Dalkon Shield), helping many get compensation from the manufacturer.
 

   

 Stuart Young
Head, East Midlands Regional Assembly

Dr Stuart Young has been Head of the East Midlands Regional Assembly since February 2008.  His role specifically relates to the management and delivery of the Assembly’s business plan and supporting Members in meeting their roles and responsibilities that include regional scrutiny.

Much of his current work relates to supporting the implementation of the Sub-National Review in the region and the development of a revised regional governance structure to deliver the new arrangements.

With experience in regional economic development and policy, Stuart has worked for the Regional Assembly for 6 years.