CASTLE DEBATES - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director and Science Director
- Honorary Research Fellow of the Macaulay Institute
Alan Jenkins is Deputy Director and Science Director of Water and Pollution Science at the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Alan's research focus lies in hydrochemical modelling diffuse pollution and water resources, in particular the development and applications of models.
Alan is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Geography, University College London. He is the Chair of the UK Committee for National and International Hydrology (incorporating the UK International Hydrology Programme Focal Centre), UK representative for the European Network of Water Research Organisations (EURAQUA), Chairman of a UN-ECE Joint Expert Group on Dynamic Modelling of Air Pollution Impacts, reporting to the Working Group on Effects of the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution and has recently completed a term of office as IHP Bureau representative for UNESCO Region 1.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer, the Carbon Tracker Initiative
Anthony Hobley is a banking lawyer based in London. He specialises in climate change and clean energy law as well as UK, EU and international environmental law. Anthony has played a key role in helping to design the UKs pilot emissions trading scheme and in developing key aspects of the EU ETS. He recently played a role in the advocacy around the Australian Clean Energy package and is currently working for a developing country Government on scoping out options for their climate and clean energy legislation. He spent time at the boutique investment bank Climate Change Capital as General Counsel to the Carbon Funds and Director of Legal Policy. Whilst there he helped CCC to establish its key investment procedures and documentation. Anthony has spent 14 years with major law firms specialising in UK and EU environmental law and more recently playing a key role in helping one of them to develop and build their leading climate change and clean energy practice group.
Anthony has been described as a leader in his field in recent editions of the Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession in the UK. Anthony has also played a key role in developing the market and conceptualised and created several organisations: (a) the Climate Markets and Investment Association where he was its first Chairman, (b) the Businesses for a Clean Economy umbrella group in Australia; and (c) Green & Tonic a London based network for sustainability professionals.
Anthony currently sits on the boards of the CMIA, The Verified Carbon Standards Association and on the Advisory Board to the Climate Bonds Initiative. Anthony has lectured and written widely on all subjects of environmental law, particularly in relation to contaminated land, renewable energy and emissions trading under the Kyoto Protocol and EU Emissions Trading Scheme. He was recently invited to speak in New Delhi by the European Commission on the investment in CDM in India and in Budapest at the British Embassy where he chaired the session jointly with Prince Andrew; in Tokyo by the Japanese power industry on both the UK and EU ETSs; in Ottawa at the annual meeting of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) and many other events. He has also appeared on UK television and radio speaking on climate change and has been quoted in the Economist, The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Anthony has contributed to a great number of publications, including "Transposition of the Emissions Trading Scheme Directive into Law and Associated Issues" by Anthony Hobley & Chris Rowe in the "Journal For European Environmental & Planning Law" (Vol 1, Number 1, Jul 04); "International Emissions Trading : A Legal Context" by Anthony Hobley and Anna McCann in "A Guide to Emissions Trading" (Jul 04); "The EU emission allowance trading scheme : a prototype for global GHG emissions allowance trading?" by Anthony Hobley and Peter Hawkes in "Environmental Liability" (Vol 11 Issue 5, Oct 03); and a chapter written for "Legal Aspects of Implementing the Kyoto Protocol Mechanisms" in "Making Kyoto Work" edited by David Freestone and Charlotte Streck (Feb 05).
Anthony qualified as a solicitor of England and Wales in 1994. He has a first class honours degree in Chemistry and Physics and recently completed a Masters Degree in Environmental Law. Prior to joining the practice, Anthony was General Counsel to the Climate Change Capital Carbon Fund and Director of Legal Policy for Climate Change Capital which he joined in September 2005. Anthony recently spent nearly two years on secondment in our Sydney office where he was heavily involved in the development of the emerging carbon and clean energy markets in Australia and Asia.
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor of Marine Conservation, University of York
Callum Roberts is professor of marine conservation at the University of York. His research focuses on threats to marine ecosystems and species, and on finding the means to protect them. His main research interests include documenting the impacts of fishing on marine life, both historic and modern, and exploring the effectiveness of marine protected areas. For the last 25 years he has used his science background to make the case for stronger protection for marine life at both national and international levels. His award winning book, The Unnatural History of the Sea, charts the effects of 1000 years of exploitation on ocean life. Callum's most recent book, Ocean of life: how our seas are changing, shows how the oceans are changing under human influence and was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Science Book Prize. It charts the accelerating rate of damage to the oceans, revealing how we are on a path to self-destruction without an urgent change of course. His research team provided the scientific underpinning for a network of six high seas marine protected areas covering 285,000 km 2 of the north Atlantic that was declared in 2010. Callum is a WWF UK Ambassador, trustee of Seaweb, Fauna and Flora International and Blue Marine Foundation, and advisor to Save our Seas and The Manta Trust. Weblinks: http://www.york.ac.uk/res/unnatural-history-of-the-sea/
Job Titles:
- Transport Planning Manager, Transport for London
Chris is responsible for the Mayor of London's aviation strategy and policy work. This includes both the development of options for a new hub airport servingLondon, as well as work examining the opportunities and limitations ofLondon's existing airports.
Following his degree at the Institute for Transport Studies in Leeds, Chris first worked on planning a light rail scheme forBristol. He became an urban traffic modeller in the private sector before taking on transport policy work for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Since joining Transport forLondon, Chris has worked on a range of projects that addressLondon's future transport needs. These include tube and tramlink extensions, major interchange improvements, high-quality bus routes, and new-mode solutions such as the Emirates Air Line cable-car.
Job Titles:
- Director of Policy, RenewableUK
Dr Gordon Edge has had a varied career in energy, initially in academia, followed by journalism, and now advocacy for the renewable energy industry. At the start of 2004 he joined BWEA (now RenewableUK), initially as Head of Offshore. In all his roles, he has had a strong interest in the economic and business aspects of energy, which made his move to being RenewableUK's Director of Economics and Markets a natural one. In 2010 he was promoted to Director of Policy, with overall responsibility for all policy issues relating to all aspects of planning, economics and delivery of all the technologies that the association champions.
Job Titles:
- CEO, NNFCC, Bioeconomy Consult
- Chief Executive of NNFCC
Jeremy is Chief Executive of NNFCC; a leading international consultancy and key advisors to the UK Government on bioenergy, biofuels and bio-based materials. He was appointed Chief Executive of NNFCC following a successful career as a chemist, culminating in his appointment as Director of the BioComposites Centre.
NNFCC are currently working with the likes of British Airways and INEOS Bio, who are developing advanced energy from waste projects in the UK. Jeremy is also a member of a number of technical advisory boards, including the European Commission ERA-NET project, the Environmental Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Network (ES KTN) and the NEPIC Thrust Programme. Jeremy also serves as Programme and Project Advisor to the Technology Strategy Board.
Gordon MacKerron is Director, SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) University of Sussex, having previously directed the Sussex Energy Group within SPRU from 2005 until 2008. He is an economist by original training, and spent four years in consulting (NERA Economic Consulting) and six months in the UK Cabinet Office Strategy Unit in addition to a mostly academic career.
Gordon has worked mostly in the economic and policy issues of energy, especially nuclear power and contemporary energy policy more broadly, including climate change and security of supply. He has played a wide range of public policy-related roles, including frequently acting as Specialist Adviser and invited witness to UK Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries; appearing as expert witness at national and international nuclear power court cases/public inquiries; and chairing the Government's independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (2003-2007). In 2011 the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change commissioned him to write a report on the financing of the UK's nuclear liabilities. (‘Evaluation of nuclear decommissioning and waste management', DECC March 2012). He was a member of the UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution until its demise in 2011.
Jackie Stone is a Partner of Castle Debates and is responsible for maintaining online communications, the website and general administration. She is also a Partner of Sykes Environmental LLP, an environmental investment and strategy business, and Unda Consulting a Flood Risk Assessment Consultancy. A qualified environmental consultant. She has a Masters Degree in Environmental Technologies from Imperial College, as well as extensive experience in the environmental business sector.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Digital Marketing Specialist
James Hubbard is a digital marketing specialist with 15 years' experience managing, assessing and optimising websites for clients in a diverse range of sectors. James offers individuals, businesses and organisations a fully customised website auditing, digital marketing and SEO assessment service, enabling clients to identify flaws and weaknesses in their online proposition and to improve their visibility on Google and other search engines.
James has a 1st class honours degree from the University of Sussex, where he specialised in web development in his final year. He joined the Castle Debates team in December 2013 and has provided guidance on promoting the debates online, managing the email database and organising regular email marketing campaigns.
James' consultancy business is online at: https://jameshubbardmarketing.co.uk.
Job Titles:
- Founding CEO of ClientEarth
James Thornton is the founding CEO of ClientEarth. The New Statesman has named him as one of 10 people who could change the world, while The Lawyer has picked him as one of the top 100 lawyers in the UK.
He is an environmental lawyer and social entrepreneur. A member of the bars of New York, California and the Supreme Court of the United States, and a solicitor of England and Wales, he moved from Wall Street law practice to found the Citizens' Enforcement Project at NRDC in New York, where he brought some 80 federal lawsuits against corporations to enforce the Clean Water Act after the Reagan Administration had stopped enforcing the law. He won these cases and embarrassed the government to start enforcing the law again.
James founded ClientEarth - Europe's first public interest environmental law organisation - in 2007. Now operating globally, it uses advocacy, litigation and research to address the greatest challenges of our time - including biodiversity loss, climate change, and toxic chemicals. Its work is always built on solid law and science. Last year ClientEarth won Business Green's NGO of the Year award.
Previously James lived in Los Angeles where he founded the Los Angeles Office of NRDC, which does internationally important environmental work with the support of the Hollywood community. He was Editor in Chief of the New York University Law Review, where he later served as Adjunct Associate Professor of Environmental Law. He has also been an executive in several other sectors of the non-profit world.
He graduated from Yale, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, with departmental honours in philosophy. He is the author of an environmental legal thriller, Immediate Harm. He is a Conservation Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.
Job Titles:
- Vice - President, Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Partners ( BBIP )
- Vice President for Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Partners
John Hanna is a Vice President for Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Partners ("BBIP"). John is focussed on the origination, execution and management of investments and is a director of McEwan Power, a 71MW portfolio of UK solar parks and BBIP's first investment. Previously, John was a transaction director within Balfour Beatty Capital and has 13 years of infrastructure investment and advisory experience. While at Balfour Beatty Capital, John was involved in the origination and acquisition of infrastructure assets in sectors such as airports and offshore transmission and has been actively involved in the management of investments across its wider portfolio. Prior to joining Balfour Beatty Capital, John worked in the infrastructure financing teams at both PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG, advising both private sector bidders and government bodies on transactions across the transport and social infrastructure sectors.
Job Titles:
- Chairman HACAN ( Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise )
John Stewart has worked or campaigned in the field of transport and the environment for over 30 years. He worked for Lambeth Public Transport for over a decade. He was prominent in the campaigns against road building in Londonin the 1980s and nationally in the 1990s. He is a past Chair of the Campaign for Better Transport and of the road safety charity, RoadPeace.
For the past 12 years he has been the executive chair of HACAN, which represents residents under the Heathrow flight paths. He is the President of UECNA, the European NGO which represents communities living around airports. He is also the chair of the UK Noise Association and has recently been appointed to the Board of London TravelWatch. He appears regularly on the media and is the author of a number of publications, including Why Noise Matters, published by Earthscan in 2011. In 2008 he was voted ‘theUK's most effective environmentalist' by the Independent on Sunday.
Job Titles:
- Director, Price Waterhouse Coopers
Jonathan is a director in PwC's climate team and has attended the UN negotiations on and off since the lead up to COP3 in Kyoto in 1997. He has worked on energy and climate risk issues for companies such as BP, Unilever and Standard Chartered, and governments from Peru to Qatar to Singapore. In 2014, Jonathan was seconded to the UK's Green Investment Bank to develop the investment strategies for grid infrastructure, transport and renewables. Prior to joining PwC, in 2007, Jonathan spent ten years in the oil industry. While at Chevron, he managed the company's response to the EU ETS and the CDM. Jonathan is on the Board of the International Emissions Trading Association and co-chairs their UNFCCC working group.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Circular Economy Task Force
Julie Hill is Chair of the Circular Economy Task Force, launched by Green Alliance on 4th July 2012. She is a former Director of, and now an Associate of, Green Alliance - one of the UK's foremost environmental policy organisations. She has recently completely terms as a Non-Executive Director of both The Eden Project and the Environment Agency for England and Wales. She has worked on environmental policy for over twenty-five years and her areas of expertise include waste & resources policy, sustainable buildings and biotechnology. Her first book ‘The Secret Life of Stuff', was published by Vintage Books in January 2011, and other publications include ‘Reinventing the Wheel', written with Hannah Hislop and published by Green Alliance in October 2011. She was awarded an MBE in 2001.
Job Titles:
- Partner, Roythornes, Solicitors
Former chief legal adviser at the NFU, Julie now heads up the agriculture team at Roythornes solicitors. She advises clients on landlord & tenant matters, the implications for farm businesses of CAP reform and other EU regulations, and general property law. In addition to direct client work, Julie manages the Roythornes internal agri-academy and their external agricultural seminars. In 2013 she was invited to be part of the Future of Farming Review group, a joint industry-government initiative aimed at exploring and making recommendations to ensure the sector has the right people and structures to meet future challenges.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Attorney - General 's Panel
Justine is a barrister at Thirty Nine Essex Street. She specialises in environmental and planning law and related fields of public, commercial, insolvency, local government, human rights, health and safety and EC and international law.
Prior to joining Thirty Nine Essex Street, she worked for Allen & Overy LLP, Simmons & Simmons and the European Commission Environment Department.
Justine is a member of the Attorney-General's Panel of Counsel, appointed to act for the Government and is appointed as an Advocate for the Welsh Assembly.
She is General Editor of the Sweet and Maxwell Encyclopaedia of Environmental Law and Case Law Editor of the Journal of Environmental Law.
Job Titles:
- Director BRE Global Limited
Martin has a diverse professional background ranging from advising UK Ministers, as a Regulator in his time at the Environment agency, to working on many construction sites. Martin joined BRE as Director in 2008 to drive BREEAM forward not just in the UK market, but also internationally. Martin works closely with the construction industry and planners to bringing sustainability issues alive for companies' right across Social, Economic and Environmental agenda
In his role he has set himself a number of challenges including:
Accelerate and broaden the uptake of sustainability tools throughout the construction industry, and planning authorities;
Make environmental standards increasingly more challenging as fast as the market will bear;
Ensure we focus the research on market priorities to overcome real and perceived barrier;
Encourage and learn innovation in the UK and internationally
Capture and benchmark best practise and disseminate that learning
Martin offers both a UK and an international perspective on construction. Martin has addressed and briefed Ministers of State and several other major fora on the environment and sustainable construction in particular. He recently gave evidence to the Environmental audit committee as part of the housing standards review.
Matthew has been director of Green Alliance since May 2010 and has 30 years' experience of UK and international environmental issues.
Prior to Green Alliance, Matthew was head of government affairs at the Carbon Trust; campaign director at Greenpeace UK and founder and chief executive of the renewable energy agency Regen SW, where he developed Wave Hub, the world's first proving ground for wave energy farms.
He read environmental biology at Liverpool University and spent the early part of his career working on tropical forest conservation.
Matt is a partner and head of Allen & Overy's London Environment and Climate Change practice. He advises on the full range of environmental, health and safety and climate change matters across a broad range of corporate, real estate projects and finance-related matters. Matt has strong experience advising on regulatory areas such as contaminated land, waste, air emissions, carbon trading, REACH and chemicals regulation, noise nuisance and product stewardship. He has worked with clients such as Shell, Akzo Nobel, RWE, the World Bank, Petroplus, Mitsubishi and Anglo American in a number of these areas. He is a regular writer and commentator on environmental matters.
Matt is recognised by independent legal directories as being one of the leading environmental lawyers in Europe. He has a "keen business sense that allows him to focus on the issues that concern clients" (Chambers 2013). The UK Legal 500 directory notes that Matt is "a great relationship-builder", and "takes time to understand and support the client's business".
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Founder, Wading Herons
Micael Johnstone is a Partner of Castle Debates with two decades of experience in the "better business" advisory world, including ESG investment, strategy, communications, sustainability and corporate purpose. Before founding his leadership advisory business Wading Herons, he led EY's world-leading purpose strategy as well as the thought leadership team.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Partner, CMS Cameron McKenna
Munir Hassan is a Partner in our Energy Team at CMS in London, helping to determine the Firm's strategy on renewables, carbon capture and emissions trading matters. Over the past seventeen years, Munir has advised on all types of arrangements in the power sector, including renewables and emissions trading, regulatory and commercial arrangements, ESCo, PPAs and tolling agreements, independent power projects, M&A transactions, sector restructurings, fuel supply arrangements, price regulated energy networks, regional trading arrangements and wholesale/retail supply issues and has drafted or advised on power sector legislation, contracts, licences and codes in a number of jurisdictions.
Job Titles:
- Programmes Legal Adviser at WWF - UK
Niall has worked at WWF-UK for over eighteen years and for the last 8 years has been its Programmes Legal Adviser advising the WWF-UK policy and campaign teams on aspects of UK, EU and international environmental and sustainable development law. He qualified as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand in 1985 and has worked both in private practice and the public sector in New Zealand and in private practice in the UK. In 1993, he left private practice to work and travel in Africa before taking up a position with WWF-UK initially as Biodiversity Policy Officer working on the Biodiversity Convention.
Job Titles:
- Head of the Environment Law Team of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP
- Partner / CMS Cameron McKenna
Paul Sheridan is a Partner and head of the environment law team of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP. He also heads up the firm's clean technology group ("cleantech"). The environment law team is objectively and consistently recognised as one of the leading environment law practices in the UK and EU. He is recognised in the legal directories as a leader in this field in the UK, EU and internationally. He has advised numerous domestic and multi-national clients on all aspects of environment law in both contentious and non-contentious matters. He is well versed on the latent and patent impacts of the current and pervasive phase of environment laws which phase is leading towards fundamental changes in the way we do business. He has advised extensively on current and proposed regulation of business activities and products together with many national and trans-national corporate and real estate transactions, land remediations, projects, PFI/PPP's, joint ventures, privatisations and the like and has run several environment law test cases.
Lead partner in a mixed family farming partnership. I developed the farm from 200 ha to the current business of 400ha+ of mainly tenanted land with some additional contract farming. Arable crops include wheat and barley grown for seed, oilseed rape, potatoes and vining peas as a member of Swaythorpe Growers. Grass and forage maize are produced for a beef enterprise of both suckler cows and fattening cattle. The farm has recently joined the Higher Level Environmental Scheme
Long term sustainable farming and soil management are the key focus; farming is based on a six-course rotation with a strong emphasis on organic matter management, which should see 2014 as the first year with no inorganic base fertiliser use.
Last year a long-redundant worker's cottage was converted for use as an educational facility with accommodation. This is already in use for school and other group visits, done as part of HLS educational access, and 2014 will see the first proper links between curriculum and planned visits.
Renewable energy is used on the farm, with one turbine in operation and another about to be built. The farmhouse and education facility use heat provided from a biomass boiler.
Prof Edmund Penning-Rowsell OBE is a geographer by discipline, taking his PhD from University College London. His research interests are the political economy of major hazards and how this affects decisions about investment in hazard mitigation. He has more than 40 years' experience of research and teaching in the flood hazard field, analysing floods and investment in flood alleviation, river management, water planning, and landscape assessment. His focus is on the social impact of floods, and the policy response from regional, national and international organisations.
Edmund founded the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University in 1970. He was twice the Chair of the Defra/Environment Agency Advisory Group on Flood and Coastal Defence Research and Development (2004/5), and was awarded the O.B.E. by the Queen in May 2006 for services to flood risk management.
Since 2012 he has had research papers published in Environment and Planning ‘C' (twice), the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, the Geographical Journal, The International Journal of River Basin Management, Area, Foresight, Natural Hazards, Environmental Science & Policy and Climate Risk Management.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Environmental Health, King ™S College London.
Professor Kelly has over 25 years experience in free radical biology. Initially as a new blood lecturer at the University of Southampton, then as a Reader/Professor and Head of Lung Biology in the Rayne Institute at St Thomas' Hospital, London before taking up the chair in Environmental Health at King's College London and becoming Director of the Environmental Research Group. During this time his work has focused on oxidant/antioxidant imbalances in a number of patient groups including preterm babies, asthmatics, lung transplant recipients and cystic fibrosis patients. For the last 10 years he has addressed the mechanisms underlying air pollution related lung injury focusing on events occurring within the respiratory tract lining fluid (RTLF) compartment of the lung. He has 2 proposed that oxidant/antioxidant events occurring in RTLF are pivotal to understanding the impact of air pollution on the lung and has employed this knowledge to develop a model system to access the oxidative potential of ambient particulate matter. He has participated in a number of EU projects, coordinated a MRC Cooperative Group investigating the mechanistic basis of particulate air pollution toxicity and is Assistant Director of the new MRC Centre for Environment and Health. Currently he leads two major Health Effects Institute (HEI) projects, which are examining the potential health benefits of the Congestion Charging Scheme (CCS) and Low Emission Zone (LEZ) in London. In addition to his research activity he is active in a number of scientific bodies. He is recent past President of the Society for Free Radical Research (Europe) for which he also served as Treasurer for 6 years. In addition to his academic work Professor Kelly provides policy support advice to a number of expert bodies. He has advised the World Health Organisation Air Pollution Advisory Board on PM10, O3 and NO2 and participated in the WHO air quality guideline global update (2005), indoor AQ guidelines (2009) and air quality and health review (2013). He served as a member of EPAQS - the UK Expert Panel on Air Quality Standards, chaired the Air Pollution Research in London (APRIL) Health committee and was a panel member on the HEI's Critical Review of Health Effects of Traffic-Related Air Pollution. He is currently a member of the Committee on Medical Effects of Air Pollution (COMEAP).
Job Titles:
- Partner at Bond Dickinson LLP / Planning
Planning Partner at law firm Bond Dickinson. Expertise includes town and country planning, compulsory purchase orders (CPOs), highways, major infrastructure projects and judicial reviews.
He is currently working on several schemes requiring Development Consent Orders (DCO) from the secretary of state, including for linear transport schemes. His compulsory purchase experience includes advising electricity utilities promoting DCOs. He has dealt with the statutory consents processes including CPO for highway matters for local highway authorities. He deals with compensation claims in the Lands Tribunal.
Job Titles:
- Head of Low Carbon Fuels Division, Department for Transport
Rob Wakely heads the Low Carbon Fuels Division in the Energy, Technology and International Directorate of the Department for Transport. He leads strategy and policy delivery on the transport elements of the EU Renewable Energy and Fuel Quality Directives, including the biofuels mandate. The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation Unit within his Division operates the UK biofuels mandate and the mandatory sustainability criteria. Current strategic and policy work streams include working across Government, with industry, environmental NGOs, and the EU Commission on the indirect land use change impact of biofuels, the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from crude oil, and the introduction of E10 to the UK market. Rob previously worked in the Department for Work and Pensions leading policy design and strategic analysis delivering major Government initiatives on pensions and welfare reform.
Roberta Blackman-Woods has been the MP for Durham City since 2005.
In October 2011 Roberta was appointed Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government. Within the Shadow CLG team she has responsibility for Planning and Local Government Procurement.
Roberta has previously served as Shadow Minister for Civil Society in the Cabinet Office, Shadow Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills and as a PPS. She also served as Chair of the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party and co-chairs a number of all party groups including the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Parliamentary Universities Group.
Before entering Parliament, Roberta was a Professor of Social Policy at the University of Northumbria, Head of Policy for the Local Government Information Unit and a councillor for Newcastle and Oxford City Councils.
Job Titles:
- Chairman, Population Matters
Job Titles:
- Head of Land - Based Renewables at DECC
Stephen Sykes has been a Partner in Castle Debates since 2011. He is a solicitor and managing partner of Sykes Environmental LLP and is an experienced chair and Non- Executive Director of environmental organisations. He is Past Chair of the United Kingdom Environmental Law Association and has chaired several scientific consultancies. He is a specialist in contaminated land and environmental insurance and has co-founded ventures in the environmental data, insurance and consulting sectors. He is a Visiting Fellow at Birkbeck College's school of entrepreneurship.
Tom is an environmental lawyer and has worked with the Environmental Law Foundation for a number of years, providing assistance to communities with environmental concerns. He is a Director of the Biodynamic Land Trust, a new Community Benefit Society set up to secure land for biodynamic farming, gardening and food growing in the long term and is on the Steering Committee of Wild Law UK, an organisation working to establish a more Earth-centred approach to law and governance. He maintains one hand in the soil and the other in the law.
Tom is an Author at Castle Debates.
Job Titles:
- Head of Small Scale and Emerging Renewables, Industry and Investment Team, DECC
Trevor Raggatt joined the Energy Group in the, then, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) in 2008. With the creation of the Department of Energy and Climate Change in September that year his portfolio changed to focus on the emerging marine energy sector, within the Office for Renewable Energy Deployment. From November 2012 his role expanded to cover a broader range of technologies giving him lead responsibility for solar PV, anaerobic digestion, advanced conversion technology, hydro power and marine energy policy.
Trevor joined the Department of Trade and Industry in 1990 after studying Chemistry at Royal Holloway College (University of London) and carrying out post-graduate research in conjunction with BP.
Initially he worked on both science policy and developing ultra-pure reference materials at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, moving to DTI in London in 1992. In the course of his career, he has worked on a diverse range of policies including National Measurement Standards, UK civil space policy, Rescue and Reconstruction of Lloyds of London, UK & International Reporting and Accounting Standards, the UK's major reviews of Company & Partnership Law and, latterly, State aid (leading, amongst other things, on aid for environmental protection).
Job Titles:
- Head of Environmental Regulation, Thames Water
Yvette de Garis joined Thames Water in 1989 and has been Head of Environmental Regulation since 2006. She is a member of the company's Executive Leadership team and has responsibilities for many aspects of environmental and quality regulation, including drinking water quality, water resources, wastewater and carbon.
Yvette holds a first degree in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia and a second degree in Environmental Economics from the University of London. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management.