Ruth Reed
President Elect
Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)

Ruth Reed studied architecture at the University of Sheffield where she completed a Masters in Landscape. She set up Reed Architects in Mid-Wales in 1992, where she rapidly won a reputation for successfully gaining planning consents, often in the face of restrictive rural planning controls.

Her association with teaching started in 1993 with roles as a visiting tutor at the Welsh School for Year 2 and as a professional examiner again for the Welsh School of Architecture and also for Plymouth and Bath Universities. With her extensive experience and knowledge of professional practice in a variety of business types, in 2006 she took over as Course Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in Architectural Practice at the Birmingham School of Architecture.

In 2007 she joined Green Planning Solutions as a part-time Partner providing architectural and landscape consultancy support for the practice's caseload of unusual and challenging planning cases.

Her involvement in the structure of the profession stretches over fifteen years in a variety of roles, including between 2003 and 2005 as President of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales. An RIBA council member for five years from 2002 she was also Vice President of Membership between 2005 and 2007 which saw the start of the successful re-emergence of the regional network as a cohesive force for devolved delivery of RIBA policy. As Chair of RIBA CPD-Sub-committee she drafted and oversaw the introduction of the Core Curriculum.

Richard McCarthy
Director General, Housing and Planning
Communities and Local Government

Richard McCarthy is the Director General Housing and Planning at the Department for Communities and Local Government (Formerly the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister). He also acts as the Department’s lead official on physical regeneration, sustainable development and the environment. Before joining the Department in October 2003, Richard was the Chief Executive of the Peabody Trust since 1999, a major housing association and regeneration agency that operates across London. Prior to this he was Group Chief Executive of the Horizon Housing Group (formerly the South London Family Housing Association Group). Richard joined the Horizon Housing Group after 15 years with the Hyde Housing Association most recently as Operations Director where he had the lead role in developing a range of innovative and successful physical regeneration and development proposals.

Richard was the Chair of the National Housing Federation from 2000-2003 and is past member of the JRF Housing and Neighbourhoods Committee. He was educated at Southampton University and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing.

He received a CBE in the 2009 New Years Honours for his services to housing and planning.

Stephen Oakes
Director
Homes and Communities Agency

Stephen Oakes is a Director for the London Region of Homes and Communities Agency which came into operation on 1st December 2008. A Chartered Surveyor and qualified Structural Engineer, he has over 25 years’ experience in land and property, particularly in the planning and delivery of large, complex regeneration sites for the public and private sectors.

In 2002, Stephen joined English Partnerships in the Milton Keynes office and soon after became an Area Director when the London and Thames Gateway region was first set up within the agency. In 2005 he also took on the responsibility of Project Director for the £1bn London-Wide Initiative, an affordable housing delivery programme. Later he was appointed the Regional Director for London and Thames Gateway and held this role until the formation of the HCA.

Before joining English Partnerships he spent a large part of his career at a leading property organisation, delivering and enabling retail, residential and commercial schemes across the UK, the majority of which were on brownfield sites.

Stephen is a Director of Barking Riverside Limited, a joint venture between English Partnerships and Bellway Homes Limited that will deliver a new community with over 10,800 new homes on one of the largest brownfield sites in the Thames Gateway. He has also been an advisor for the CLG’s Decent Homes Programme and represents the HCA on a number of regeneration and housing Boards/Partnerships.

John Alker
Public Affairs and Communications Manager
UK Green Building Council

John has worked as an MP's researcher and speech-writer in the House of Commons and in commercial public affairs for Political Intelligence. Prior to joining the UK-GBC John led political communications on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and sustainable homes campaign for the environmental charity WWF-UK.

Professor Yvonne Rydin
Chair of the SEMBE Project's Expert Panel, Foresight & Professor of Planning, Environment and Public Policy at University College London's Bartlett School of Planning

Yvonne's research is within an institutionalist paradigm looking at the networks and discourses of local planning. She has studied housing land policy, urban redevelopment, transport management, local air quality policy, countryside protection and water management. Particular interests are processes of strategy development, public participation, the role of social capital in planning, and the analysis of of policy discourses. She has also worked on urban sustainability and its relationship to urban governance in a multi-level context.

Yvonne has undertaken consultancy projects for DCLG, DIUS, GLA, HEFCE, NAO and the Civic Trust. Yvonne teaches graduate modules on Planning Practice and Valuation, as well as leading on the Sustainable Development project. Her undergraduate teaching is on urban and environmental politics.

Yvonne has a background in Land Economy and Regional and Urban Planning Studies, as well as a short stint in practice as a Chartered Surveyor working on planning and development issues. She has worked in departments of Geography and Environment, Land Management and Applied Economics before coming home to Planning.

Matt Bell
Campaigns and Education Director
The Commission for Architecture and Built Environment (CABE)

Matt joined CABE in 2003. His brief includes leading CABE’s engagement with the private volume housing industry; motivating consumers and young people to learn about and demand good design; and influencing emerging government policy on housing, public space and the procurement of schools and healthcare buildings.

Matt is also chair of Hope and Homes for Children, a £6 million international NGO operating across Eastern Europe and Africa. These roles follow five years as the communications director of VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), where he led the organisation’s campaigns and strategy on HIV and AIDS. He has also worked on grassroots community programmes in both Bolivia and Thailand and spent 10 years in the UK international NGO sector.

Clare Miller
Executive Director
Governance and Viability, Tenant Service Authority

Clare was the director of Regulation at the Housing Corporation and led the Corporation’s response to the Cave Review of regulation. Clare is a graduate of Aberdeen University and qualified as a chartered accountant with Coopers and Lybrand. Clare has overseen the development of a new risk-based approach to regulation and in 2007 was recognised for her contribution to housing by the CIH through the award of distinguished professional membership.

Abigail Davies
Head of Policy
The Chartered Institute of Housing

Abigail Davies is Head of Policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing. She leads the policy team, whose aims are to represent and support the housing profession, influence government thinking and help to shape housing and regeneration policy at national and regional level. She specialises in a range of policy areas, including regulation, planning and the private rented sector, and sits on a number of advisory groups for organisations and government. Over the last few years
Abigail has written or co-written several CIH publications supporting policy and practice development in the housing sector, including Ways and Means, Leading the way: achieving resident driven accountability and excellence; and Mortgage Rescue for the 21st Century.

Abigail is currently working on the housing reform agenda and ways for the housing sector and housing policy to respond to the economic downturn. She has previously worked as a Supported Housing Officer for both Gloucestershire Housing Association and the YMCA, as Tenancy Support Team Leader at Derby Homes, and as Policy Officer and Principal Policy Officer at the CIH. She is a Fellow of the CIH and has an MA in Housing Policy and Practice.

Matthew Taylor MP

Matthew Taylor entered Parliament in 1987, holding this seat for the Liberal Democrats. He will be standing down for the next general election.

He was appointed Economics Policy Research Assistant to the Parliamentary Party, seconded to David Penhaligon MP, in July 1986. Matthew Taylor is proud to have represented the constituency in which he spent his early childhood, and where he started his education. He takes a continuing special interest in education policy and the environment.

He was chairman of the the party's Campaigns and Communications Committe [1992-94] when it developed the 'target seats strategy' for the 1997 General Election in which the party won 46 seats.

Matthew Taylor served as Shadow Chancellor [1999-2003], when he became chair of the Parliamentary Party [2003-05]. He was Shadow Minister for Social Exclusion from 2006 until January 2007.

Henry Cleary
Deputy Director, Housing & Growth Programmes Team
Communities and Local Government

Henry Cleary leads on growth and renewal issues within the Housing Delivery & Homelessness Directorate in the Communities and Local Government. The growth programme remit is to help deliver a step change in housing supply and growth as part of the drive to create more sustainable communities and to secure market renewal alongside this. These programmes involve close working with partners in the national and regional agencies and local government, the private sector and the Government Offices. The Department's role focuses on the delivery of the newer growth areas, the New Growth Points, and the Eco-towns initiative and housing market renewal as well as cross cutting issues affecting growth and infrastructure.

Henry Cleary joined the Department of the Environment in 1977 and has worked in a range of posts on urban, environmental protection and regeneration policy, and in the Department of Transport. These have included New Towns Division in the early 1980s and the first phase of work on the East Thames Corridor in the early 1990s. He headed Rural Development Division in DETR/DEFRA, where his main responsibilities were production of the Rural White Paper in 2000, and its implementation before moving to his present area of growth and housing supply in 2001.