Trustees
David Bowler Dr. Sally Taylor
David has over 20 years experience of housing, community development and regeneration work in the public and private sectors. David established the Queens Park New Media Centre in the late 1990s in partnership with the ICA whilst employed by City of Westminster as Head of Estate Regeneration.
Since 2003 David has been Programme Director of North Fulham NDC, one of the 39 New Deal for Communities projects established by the Government in 2000/2001 to improve health, educational attainment and employment, reduce crime and regenerate the physical environment in some of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in England. Working to a Partnership Board made up of representatives of the local community, councillors, public agencies, business and the voluntary sector, David is currently guiding his NDC through the process of establishing a successor body to continue regeneration work after the wind up of the Government's NDC grant funding programme in 2010/11.
Hugh McGeever
Hugh is the Managing Director of Residential Management Group [RMG] Limited. The business manages 130,000 private sector properties and over 13,000 public sector properties nationally making it the largest provider of property management services in the UK.
Hugh worked in the provision of public sector housing services leaving University in 1981. He became a qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Housing in 1985.
He worked for Southwark Council for 7 years in a variety of roles before joining Westminster City Council in 1988 as an Area Manager. Following a number of promotions Hugh was appointed to the role of Operations Manager heading the Council housing management service and all other frontline services within the department. In total this involved the management of over 400 officers.
During 200/2001 Hugh was a member of the senior management team that led to the creation of WMS Haywards which was launched following the successful tendering and outsourcing of the Westminster Housing services.
Professor Nick Bailey
Nick Bailey is Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Westminster. He originally qualified as a Town Planner, has worked in a number of planning and housing posts and has many years of teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In 1996 he helped launch London’s first Masters programme in Urban Regeneration and in 2004 received sponsorship from the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit to set up the first specialist programme in Neighbourhood Management.
Nick has been involved in a series of research projects on the new skills agenda and the implications for higher education and other providers. He has also published widely on teaching and learning, the role of Local Strategic Partnerships and was joint author of Partnerships in British Urban Policy (UCL Press, 1995).
In 2003 he was funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation to research a study of community involvement strategies for development trusts and in 2006 published a good practice guide on mixed tenure housing for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. He has prepared a similar Guide for the JRF in Scotland. He is a member of the BURA panel for annual awards in community-inspired regeneration and Inspire East’s Skills Advisory Group.
Nick has many years experience as a board member of a Community Development Trust in central London and assisted in the formation of the Development Trusts Association.
Lyndon Sly is currently the Head of School for Business & Educational Partnerships at City of Westminster College.
Lyndon has worked as a teacher and Course Leader in Further Education since 1988 and as a head of department since 1998. Before joining City of Westminster College in 2001 he worked at Warwickshire College. His areas of specialism and research are: Art & Design education, the role and function of language in the Visual Arts, Foundation Degrees and the interconnectivity between the Origins of Modernism and the Western Front (1914-18).
Lyndon is also the Chair of the National Specialist Development Group (SDG) for CoVEs in the Creative Industries sector and has contributed to Sector Skills Council framework development, conferences and publications on Foundation Degrees.
Fabian Sharp was born in Paddington in 1973. He has lived much of his life in and around Paddington, and for the last five years has been working for the Paddington Development Trust.
Currently employed as Neighbourhood Manager for the Queen’s Park ward of Westminster, Fabian is aware of the broad range of issues relating to regeneration, and has a particular interest in social issues related to areas of high deprivation.Fabian graduated with a 2:1 from UCL in European Studies in 1997. After working in the private lettings sector, which he says exposed him to “inequalities and injustices suffered by the most vulnerable”, he returned to education and completed a masters in Urban Regeneration at Westminster University. While studying, Fabian was responsible for administering the Capacity-Building budget of the SRB5 New Life for Paddington programme.
Frances has worked in social housing and regeneration for over twenty years. As Chief Housing Officer at Westminster City Council she was responsible for two Estate Action programmes and took the lead in piloting Neighbourhood Management in Church St, the most deprived ward in WCC.
Working in close partnership with other statutory and voluntary agencies Frances was involved in numerous schemes to tackle deprivation and health inequalities. Frances has good experience of working regionally and sub regionally across London including chairing the housing forum for London homelessness subgroup for 2 years. She was responsible for the homeless element of the London housing strategy.
Frances now works as Head of Social Inclusion and Health at the Greater London Authority.
Sally has spent the whole of her career in the field of social and policy research: as an academic at York and Manchester Universities, a civil servant in the Employment Department, in social research agencies including the National Centre for Social Research, MORI and British Market Research Bureau, and for the last ten years, as a freelance policy researcher.
She undertakes research projects mainly for central (Cabinet Office, Treasury, DWP, DCLG) and local government, but also for professional bodies, charities and private sector companies. Consequently she has worked on a very wide range of subjects, from the relevance of Local Authority Best Value performance indicators to strategies to reform the Child Support Agency.
Sally has a longstanding interest in work on social and particularly financial exclusion, as well as public perceptions of and engagement with central and local government. She was involved in the background research for the 2006 Local Government White Paper and the 2007 Councillors' Commission.