2010 Conference Speakers
The speakers for the 2010 Conference were: Robert Napier, Robin Nicholson CBE, Alex Plant and Sir David Trippier.
Robert Napier
Robert Napier is chairman of the Homes and Communities Agency, having formerly been chairman and non-executive director of English Partnerships.
Robert is also chairman of the Board of the Met Office. He was chief executive of WWF-UK, the UK arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature, from 1999 to April 2007. Before that he spent 16 years at Redland plc, where he was successively financial director, managing director and chief executive.
Robert is currently a non-executive director of Anglian Water Services. He was formerly a non-executive director of Rentokil Initial plc, non-executive director of United Biscuits plc, chairman of the CBI Transport Policy Committee and president of the National Council of Building Material Producers.
Robert's community activities include being chairman of the Governors of Sedbergh School and a trustee of Baynards Zambia Trust. He is also chairman of the trustees of the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Robin Nicholson CBE
Robin Nicholson CBE is a senior director of Edward Cullinan Architects. He has worked on a range of health, education and regeneration projects in the UK and abroad since joining the practice in 1979. Previously he taught at the Bartlett and PNL and worked for James Stirling in London and Cristian Boza in Chile.
He was a vice-president of the RIBA (1992-1994), chair of the Construction Industry Council (1998-2000), the M4i (Movement for Innovation) board (1998-2002) and the Egan skills task force. He is a founder member of The Edge and the design quality indicator development group. He sits on the NHBC board. Robin is joint East of England champion with Commissioner Anthea Case. Robin Nicholson CBE has recently been appointed as Chairman of the Cambridgeshire Quality Panel and was a CABE Commissioner 2002-10.
Alex Plant
Alex took up the role of Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire Horizons in early 2008. Cambridgeshire Horizons is the not for profit organisation driving forward the delivery of sustainable new communities in Cambridgeshire.
Alex joined Cambridgeshire Horizons from the Government Office for the East of England (GO-East), where he was Deputy Regional Director with particular responsibility for Development and Infrastructure, taking forward the Governments' growth agenda across the region.
Prior to joining GO-East, Alex was Head of Economic Policy & International Aviation at the Civil Aviation Authority, and before this worked in HM Treasury on various micro-economic policy issues and led for HMT on competition policy throughout the process of reforming the UK competition regime and introducing the 2002 Enterprise Act. He previously held a number of other Whitehall positions, in particular covering elements of tax policy. He is a graduate of Nottingham University (2:1 Joint Honours in History & Politics) and has studied competition and regulation economics at City University, London.
Sir David Trippier
Sir David joined Cambridgeshire Horizons as its Chairman in 2004 and has experienced the exciting movement from planning to implementation of developments in the Sub-region.
Sir David has a wealth of experience spanning the last three decades in national and local government. He was Leader of the Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council at the age of 28, and then went on to become the Member of Parliament for Rossendale and Darwen. Subsequently he became Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction in the Department for the Environment, and later Minister of State for the Environment and Countryside.
He has wide experience of the private sector having served as Chairman or Director of several public and private companies including ITV Granada and W.H. Ireland Stockbrokers. He became a Colonel in the Royal Marines Reserve, in which he served for 26 years, having qualified as a Commando and parachutist.
In 2006, he won a National Award for Leadership sponsored by the Daily Telegraph for his work at Cambridgeshire Horizons.