Professional approach to sustainable communities

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has named the new team leading the drive to deliver the skills needed to create sustainable communities via the Academy for Sustainable Communities.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has named the new team leading the drive to deliver the skills needed to create sustainable communities.

Mr Prescott announced the eight board members of the Academy for Sustainable Communities.

They will work alongside the Chair, Professor Peter Roberts and the recently appointed chief executive, Dr Gill Taylor.

The Leeds-based Academy, the first of its kind in Britain, has a new approach to improving the skills, knowledge and behaviours needed to deliver and maintain sustainable communities across the country.

A wide range of professions - such as planners, architects and housing professionals, social and health workers - will work with the Academy to ensure an integrated approach to creating sustainable communities.

As part of the UK presidency of the EU, the Deputy Prime Minister will be hosting a Ministerial informal meeting in Bristol 2005-12-6/7 which will focus on creating better places to live, sharing experience and good practice across the EU.

Among the items to be discussed include how we can develop the professional skills needed to create sustainable communities and strengthen economic prosperity.

Partnerships between the professions The Academy for Sustainable Communities will collaborate with partners across Europe to improve skills and partnerships between the professions.

The new board members are as follows:.

* Anne McNamara, co-Founder and director of FSquared, a Manchester-based regeneration consultancy that works with developers and others to improve the social and economic outcomes of major capital investments and to leave a legacy of sustainable regeneration.

* George Martin has been director of sustainability at the Building Research Establishment since 2004.

A chartered engineer and geologist, George set up his own consultancy before being appointed as director of environment for Tarmac.

* Irene Lucas has been chief executive of South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council since 2002.

Before that she was with Sunderland City Council for twenty five years, latterly as assistant chief executive.

* Juliet Williams has been chairman of the South West of England Regional Development Agency since 2002, where she has been closely involved in the Agency's rural renaissance programme and in setting up three urban regeneration companies.

* Kevin Murray runs his own consultancy practice specialising in planning, facilitation and consultation in regeneration, development and sustainability projects across the UK.

He is a past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and served on the Egan Task Group on Skills and then on the ODPM Steering Group on the Academy for Sustainable Communities.

* Paul Spooner has been a regional director of English Partnerships, and a member of its executive management board since 2004.

He joined English Partnerships from Birmingham City Council, where he had been Director of Economic Development.

* Peter Hetherington recently retired as regional affairs editor of The Guardian.

He chaired an a cross-party commission on local governance, currently chairs a TCPA-led commission - a Vision for England - and is a visiting processor at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

* Deborah Lamb has, since 2002, been director of policy and communications at English Heritage and a member of its executive board.

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