Conference Day 2 Speakers

09:30 - Key Note: Angelique Foster (Police & Crime Commissioner)

Angelique Foster has been a key figure in local goverment politics for more than a decade. 

Origionally from France, Mrs Foster has lived in Derbyshire for 25 years and is married with a grown up family.

With a Masters degree in Law from Sheffield University, Mrs Foster has served as Leader of Dronfield Town Council and as Cabinet member for Corporate Services at Derbyshire County Council with a portfolio that included Finance, Legal, Property, HR and IT, and responsibility for managing a budget of £46million.

Mrs Foster recently resigned from her role to take on her new responsibilities as Derbyshire PCC and is determined to manage the budget effectively to maximise resources for fighting crime.

She has pledged to put the law-abiding citizen at the centre of all policing policies and priorities in Derbyshire to keep local people and their families safe.

Central to her ambitions is reducing the fear of crime across Derbyshire’s communities by increasing police numbers and patrols, providing a strong police presence in towns and villages and supporting Police Officers in the use of powers such as Stop and Search to protect communities from crime.

She also aims to work with the Government to deliver a tougher approach to policing, strengthen partnership work locally to improve safety, tackle antisocial behaviour, drive down burglaries, robberies and theft, improve road safety, fight rural crime and address domestic violence and drug-related crime.

09:45 - Understanding Community Hubs - Beverley Parker (Rural Action Derbyshire)

Bev was appointed to the post of CEO of RAD in April 2017. She is a keen advocate of rural issues, having grown up in a South Derbyshire village with very few services even then. Nowadays the village has no shop, no doctors’ surgery and a very occasional bus service.

She grew up surrounded by the countryside, did casual work at the local potato farm and kept a scruffy pony in a farmer's field sandwiched between the A38 trunk road and the main railway line between Derby and Birmingham.

In her career she has worked in various local authorities, mainly in culture and tourism, organising large scale outdoor events, managing a museum and country park, promoting conferences in a large seaside resort and working for a regional arts board as a senior manager. She worked for the Audit Commission for 9 years but in 2011, following sweeping political changes, the Audit Commission was demised and redundancy followed. She then spent nearly 3 years teaching at a residential school for girls with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties (a good grounding for being CEO at RAD!). She has been a school governor for many years at a local primary school.

She lives in Staffordshire, a stone’s throw from the Derbyshire border. With her partner Ian she farms around 70 acres with around another 30 acres of grazing land on an annual basis. They have around 200 Jacob sheep and 4 Longhorn beef cattle and they produce hay and haylage mainly for the equestrian market.

10:05 - Becoming a Warm Hub - Christine Nicholls (Community Action Northumberland)

Christine Nicholls is a Community Development Officer and works for Community Action Northumberland.   She has lived in
 Northumberland for 20 years and worked for ‘CAN’ for over 10 years.

Christine is the organisational lead for energy equality within the organisation and runs another of energy related projects including the multi award winning warm hubs project, Northumberland’s Off-grid taskforce, rural food kitchens energy roadshows and lots more!

She is on the stakeholders panel for Northern Powergrid and Northern Gas Networks and the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.

11:00 - Challenges of a new build project during the pandemic - Norman Harris & James Dacre (FPCR Environmental & Design Ltd & Ashbourne Pavilion)

Norman Harris

Norman is a retired Professional Civil Engineer with a background of Contracting, Design and Management, mainly in Ground Engineering, both in the UK and Australia.

Norman was invited to join the Partnership in early 2018 and became a Trustee shortly afterwards. He worked with a small team on many of the construction related activities that the Partnership were responsible for including, but not limited to, organising Contracts directly with Utility suppliers, Health and Safety matters and Risk Assessments, Funding applications and Cost Planning. At a later stage, they held many Value Engineering meetings to reduce costs to suit funding projections.

More recently, he has been working as a Community Trustee and representing Community interests on the Partnership Board. Vollunteering to help with the construction of Ashbourne Pavilion.

James Dacre

James has over 9 years’ experience working in architecture including over 3 years post Part 3 ARB registration. He has worked on master planning, residential, community and heritage conservation projects ranging in scale from the micro to macro. This gives James a holistic understanding of the end user experience and wider context issues involved. He has a balanced approach to design using natural creativity alongside technical knowledge to develop projects that are both aspirational and feasible. He is comfortable working at all stages of work from concept through to construction.

James has a passion for sustainable design and in 2019 was Sustainability Specialist on the RIBA East Midlands Awards jury panel. He is currently undertaking training in Passivhaus software. James is Principal Designer and Lead Consultant on the Ashbourne Pavilion project which is on site and due for completion in September 2021. Throughout his career he has worked on a variety of residential projects, including some time abroad in Malaysia, and as such has an in-depth knowledge of this sector. He has been Project Lead on a number of projects achieving successful planning approvals for reserved matters and full planning applications.

James has worked with Ashbourne Recreation Ground Sports & Community Partnership since 2017. He has helped the Partnership explore different layout and material options for public consultation, handled planning submissions, and assisted in value engineering exercises. As Lead Consultant, he coordinated the input of engineers and as Principal Designer, he provided the health and safety input required under CDM 2015 Regulations. The project is a traditional procurement and as such James is Contract Administrator too.