Staff

Jessica Crowe, Executive Director
Jessica Crowe has extensive experience as a community representative, non-executive scrutineer and consultant who has contributed to public service improvement at both national and local levels.
 
She has been a non-executive director of Homerton University Hospital Foundation Trust and of Groundwork East London and between 1998 and 2006 she was an elected councillor in the London Borough of Hackney, where she was Deputy Mayor and cabinet member for a wide range of services. Between 2001 and 2003 Jessica was a policy officer for LGiU, a local government think tank, and she has worked as a consultant on a range of adult education, policy and research projects.  She has also worked as an adviser to a government minister, for the Labour Party and the Local Government Association.

 
Tim Gilling, Health Scrutiny Programme Manager (Acting Executive Director)
Tim has been supporting local authority councillors and the democratic process for over 25 years. He has worked at County and Unitary Councils and rural and urban District Councils, implementing and supporting revised political management arrangements since 2001.

For the last 5 years, Tim has been managing the CfPS support programme for local authority health overview and scrutiny committees.

  
Ed Hammond, Research and Information Manager
Ed is responsible for carrying out research projects on public scrutiny issues. This has included work on regional scrutiny, and preparation of good practice guidance for local government legislation. He liaises with regional networks of councillors and scrutiny officers, promoting and sharing best practice, and facilitates regional training events for scrutineers.  He also manages the work programme for the CfPS Associates.

 
Avril Davies, Health Scrutiny Advisor
Avril is a serving councillor and former Primary Care Trust and Community Health Council Chair. She is a political science graduate with a background in social, ethical, and market research with Gallup. Avril is responsible for establishing our new Healthy Accountability Forum and developing a new round of learning through scrutiny funding to OSCs


Su Turner, Principal Consultant
Su has worked for Local Government for over 20 years the last 10 years of which have been spent in senior policy and partnership roles. She has experience in a wide range of services which work to improve the health and well-being of local communities; including supporting Elected Members (executive and backbench), and has worked across the NHS and Local Government in a jointly funded post that developed successful partnership working across all sectors.

Su has recently joined the Centre for Public Scrutiny to lead the development of an exciting new programme examining and promoting the role that Overview and Scrutiny can contribute to tackling Health Inequalities.

  
Adam Pickering, Research Officer
Adam undertakes background and detailed research for the team as well as carrying out qualitative and quantitative research projects in areas involving scrutiny across the public sector.


Dushana Nathan, Communications and Events Executive
Dushana has overall responsibility for CfPS' marketing, events and communications strategy, including running the CfPS annual conference and other regional scrutiny events.  She is committed to raising the profile of the CfPS as a centre of excellence for public scrutiny.

 
Fateha Begum, Project Co-ordinator
As Project Co-ordinator for the Centre for Public Scrutiny Fateha is responsible for day to day running of the office.  She also co-ordinates and supports team members on various projects and activities.  
 
 
Laura Freeborn, Project Co-ordinator (Health Programme)
As the Project Coordinator for the Health Programme Laura manages the Expert Advisory Team (EAT) and works to support the Health Programme through various other activities.