President, Vice Presidents, Trustees

President

We thank Lord Egremont for his many years of service and support as President of CPRE Sussex.  We’ll be seeking a new President in due course.

Rodney Chambers  Vice President

Rodney Chambers spent his teenage years in rural Gloucestershire. He had a career in teaching (including a spell in Tanzania) and Community Education.

On early retirement in 1992, he fulfilled a long-held ambition to move to Chichester – a characteristic Sussex town with a close relationship with its surrounding countryside.

He joined CPRE in 2006 and was very soon appointed Vice Chairman for West Sussex. Then, when Roy Haycock was forced by ill-health to retire from the Chair, Rodney became acting Chair until confirmed in the post at the 2008 AGM.

During his time in office he did his best to guide the Branch through a period of considerable change, some of it internal but much of it as a result of changes in planning law and the advent of localism.

Unfortunately his eyesight eventually deteriorated to such an extent that he decided to step down from the Chair but continues to serve the Branch as Vice President.

Rodney is a member of the Executive Committee of the Chichester Society which works to protect the urban environment of Chichester.

Vice President

Margaret Moore has retired as Vice President of CPRE Sussex and we thank her for her many years of encouragement and support.

Libby Alexander  Trustee

Libby was brought up in West Sussex and after many years of travel and living abroad returned to her roots and now lives in Chichester. She is concerned that the inherent culture, strong communities, and unique environment that encapsulates both the South Downs National Park and the rich low lying sea plain, interspersed with the estuaries of the many harbours of the AONB, is sadly under attack.

She became involved in the local Parish Council and was put forward as a prospective District Councillor not long after returning to Chichester. Whilst just missing out on the position, the experience afforded Libby an insight into how much was needed to raise awareness of the encroaching harms to the local environment. It was then that the idea to form an environmental group took shape and Libby created SOSCA, Save Our South Coast Alliance.

Libby’s arts degree has been hugely powerful in her understanding of how crucial environments are to the wellbeing and functioning of society. Working at the United Nations in Rome, then CPRE HQ in London and other positions including an award-winning PR company in London has helped her form a strong belief that the corporate and political worlds have to be influenced towards the long-term benefit of mankind – most especially the environment.

Penny Hudd    Trustee

Brought up on a working farm in Norfolk Penny trained as a designer and landscape architect, working initially in the UK before moving to Asia and the USA where she worked on major projects for architects, hospitals, governments and blue chip companies.

On returning to the UK she continued to practice before moving into design education initially lecturing at Norwich School of Art. This was followed by a move to Scotland where she was Head of Communication Design at Glasgow School of Art and latterly to London as Head of the School of Design at Kingston University.

She has been an academic advisor and external examiner for many major institutions in the UK and Europe including the Royal College of Art, Central St Martins, the Austrian Education Department and the Universities of Creative Arts, Brighton and Lancashire.  Until recently she was a Governor of City College, Brighton & Hove.

Always a country lover, Penny has been an active member and trustee of CPRE Sussex since 2010.

David Johnson    Trustee and Vice Chair

David Johnson was brought up on the edge of the Green Belt and North Downs, playing out on its commons and woods. Although going to school in central London he became a ‘Young Farmer’ and worked on a small farm’s dairy, its horse drawn milk float and potato picking.

David’s varied career led him to work with the Irish cheese and ‘real’ food producers, to develop effective public, health and welfare services and encourage equal opportunities across rural and urban settings. In recent years he has taught on international MBAs in China, Japan, South America and Europe on organisational and management development and led leadership programmes in the UK and Ireland.

In the 1990s David moved from Wimbledon to rural East Sussex where he kept horses on a few acres. David has worked with voluntary organisations since the 1980s, currently as a school governor in Brighton; he helped set up Shoreham Wordfest.

A long time country lover and user, his anxiety at the Government’s pressure for building at any cost, led him to join CPRE Sussex as chair. Having served his maximum term as Chair, in 2019 he took on a new role as Vice Chair. He continues to seek to build strong alliances with campaigners across Sussex, attract new volunteers and members from among both rural and urban country users and renew the sense of countryside stewardship in the wider society.

Dr John Kay    Trustee

John is the planning lead for the CPRE Sussex Lewes District group. He is a long-standing Ringmer parish councillor, with spells as both chair and planning committee chair. He chaired the steering groups that produced a Village Plan in 2003, Employment and Housing Strategies in 2006 and 2009, and a Neighbourhood Plan in 2016.

Prior to retirement John was Associate Dean of the Brighton & Sussex Medical School and a Non-Executive Director of East Sussex Downs & Weald Primary Care Trust.

John is a Trustee of King’s Church, Lewes; of the Ringmer Parish Almshouse Charity; and of a parish charity that provides affordable housing for young families. He is a board member of the Ringmer area Community Land Trust, formed in 2018 and with its first planning application now submitted.

Monty Larkin  Trustee

Monty has lived in Sussex for the whole of his life – he possesses a deep, life-long passion for the beautiful Sussex countryside. He spent 42 years working on behalf of landscape, wildlife conservation and the nurturing of cultural interest within Sussex and has strived hard to encourage a richer biodiversity of wildlife, achieved through both practical wildlife conservation, talks and collaborating with farmers, until finally retiring in 2017. Monty has self-published three books including ‘Seven Sisters – The History Behind The View’.

His strengths stem from having had both a managerial and hands-on, long career. He holds an in-depth knowledge of many aspects of the countryside – both past and present, accrued over the years and enjoys a respected reputation for his expertise, having been able to apply his knowledge to benefit the countryside and the influencing of issues. He has a wide-ranging understanding of farmers requirements and their constraints developed through his work.

Monty has been closely involved with several bio-diverse countryside properties, including managing the 700 acre iconic Seven Sisters Country Park, as Area Field Officer for the former Sussex Downs Conservation Board and also responsible for the East Sussex Dutch Elm Disease Control programme, caring for the well-being of 53,000
elm trees between Brighton and Eastbourne including the towns of Lewes, Seaford and Newhaven. Monty also set-up and managed the Sussex Pony Grazing & Conservation Trust, this eventually totalling five herds consisting of 85 Exmoor free-living ponies, these assisting in the management of chalk and acid grasslands and heathland SSSIs.

Prof Dan Osborn  Trustee and Chair

Dan is founding Editor-in-Chief of UCL Open Environment a multi-disciplinary academic journal publishing across many aspects of the open environment and that on which we live. His own research interests concern how people’s wellbeing relates to their environment and its natural resources.

He works closely with the Sussex Community Development Association (SCDA) and offers advice on the environment in SCDA’s work with Sussex communities. He is a member of the Sussex Nature partnership’s Health and Wellbeing Sub-Group.

Dan is President of the South Downs Network, a grouping of Sussex and Hampshire environment bodies with interests in the South Downs National Park.

He has worked with businesses, charities, national and local government in the UK and with the European Commission and various Parliamentary groups on a range of legislative and best practice issues.
Much of this work has involved protecting the health and wellbeing people and the environment and ensuring that resources, such as water, are used more sustainably. Partnership working to co-produce
knowledge and use it is an underlying theme of much of this work.

Sally Pavey    Trustee

Sally Pavey is a resident of the parish of Warnham, West Sussex, having moved there with her family 20 years ago.  Sally has over 30 years experience of international marketing, PR, event management and is currently employed as a consultant.

As a volunteer she has organised many charitable events such as the Cancer Research Pink Gift Fair and Wellbeing event.  She also writes for the local media, is an elected councillor for Warnham Parish Council sitting on HALC, WSALC and the HDC climate change group, and is deputy chair of Horsham Conservative Party.

Sally is chair of CAGNE, Communities Against Gatwick Noise and Emissions, founded in February 2014 which is now the umbrella aviation community and environment group for Sussex, Surrey and Kent.  CAGNE assists residents with the ramifications of Gatwick Airport operations and environmental concerns worldwide relating to aviation.  It strongly opposes the rebuilding of the emergency runway as a second runway and unsustainable growth of a volatile and polluting airport. CAGNE is supported by parish councils via the CAGNE Aviation Town and Parish Council Forum, NGOs and CPRE branches.

For leisure Sally loves her countryside home, gardening, walking her dogs and horse riding.

Dr Roger F Smith  Trustee

FRGS is a Sussex-born activist who has campaigned since 1996 against development that is inappropriate and destructive of communities, countryside and the natural environment.

Educated Jesus Oxford (DPhil, and PGCE) and the University of Southampton; a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; variously a professional archaeologist, Royal Air Force Officer, arctic explorer and expedition leader and planner, farm worker, conservation officer, company secretary, and Trustee CPRE Sussex and Protect Sussex Group chair.

He is very concerned for the future of our precious countryside and landscapes.

Deborah Speirs  Trustee

Deborah was born in Horsham, Sussex and returned two years ago to live in this beautiful county. She is involved as a volunteer in a number of organisations and works part-time for the Co-op Local Community Fund supporting local good causes. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening and walking her dog in the West Sussex countryside.

She is a fundraising professional having spent nearly 30 years managing multiple stakeholder relationship teams in major donor, corporate, trust, events and community fundraising. She has direct experience of
development and fundraising in health and medical research charities including British Heart Foundation, Alzheimer’s Disease International and RNID; environmental charity WWF, international development charity
Hope and Homes for Children and children’s charities including  Rainbow Trust and Naomi House children’s hospice as well as independent school foundations.

Deborah continues to use her experience of fundraising in a voluntary capacity both as a mentor to younger charity professionals and as a trustee.

Corinne Stuart  Trustee

Corinne, for the last 13 years, has specialised in working with membership organisations including the Royal Institution and the Countryside Alliance.

A natural partnership builder, she is accomplished in member engagement, retention, and recruitment and has a consistent track record of delivering outstanding results for the organisations she works with. Corinne is currently Chief Executive of the Society of Homeopaths, responsible for the strategic direction and financial
health of the Society.

Corinne grew up in Kent and East Sussex moving back to Hurst Green from Surrey in 2019. She was born with a love of the countryside, her father, grandparents and great-grandparents all farming in the Heathfield area. Remembering the number and diversity of wildlife in the countryside of her childhood, the destruction of hedgerows and natural habitat for insects, bats and bees, and their alarming decline, is of great concern to her. As is the building over large areas of woodland and meadows, enjoyed for generations but lost to our children and grandchildren.

By offering her skills to CPRE Sussex she hopes to be of help in growing support across Sussex, delivering on even more projects to protect the countryside today and into the future.

Dr Jill Sutcliffe  Trustee

Jill was born in London within reach of nine Ancient Woodlands though it was some time before she understood this! She had Scottish and Cornish grandparents so became aware early on of the experiences of the more distant parts of the UK. She attended the Henrietta Barnett School in north London, a voluntary-aided state grammar school for girls founded in 1911 by the social reformer, community planner and pioneer of early female education, Dame Henrietta Octavia Weston Barnett.

Her first degree was in Combined Sciences as the Environment hadn’t yet reached the curriculum! Her first job marked out the course she would follow working with student environment groups and supporting their work with newsletters, conferences and liaison. She took part in the first botanical survey of Cornwall evaluating the importance of the sites, setting up the junior branch of the Wildlife Trust and coordinating the local branches.

At last she had both the time and the Environment courses she could apply for – namely the masters and PhD in Environmental Technology at Imperial College. That was followed by working to coordinate the botanical work for 10 years of English Nature now named Natural England.

Alongside her working life she has taken part in a variety of voluntary groups – opening a Women’s Refuge, chairing the Manhood Peninsula FOE group, co-founding the Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group,
encouraging local people to take an active interest in their local environment and chairing KKWG, the Keep Kirdford and Wisborough Green group – opposing an application for “fracking” and becoming the first village in the UK to succeed in getting the application turned down. She co-chairs the Office for Nuclear Regulation, ONRNGO Forum.

Katherine Sykes  Trustee

Katherine grew up on a dairy farm on the Surrey/Sussex border and has a deep and abiding love of cows, fields and trees. Having spent most of her working life in London, she returned to Sussex a few years ago and is now happily living in the South Downs, which she views as the green lungs of the south of England. Katherine is a keen walker, avid gardener and strongly believes in preserving our nation’s beautiful countryside, rivers and seas for all to enjoy.

Professionally, she specialises in strategic and crisis communications, PR, public affairs, policy and campaigns and has spent over 20 years delivering board and senior level counsel to FTSE 100 companies, trade
associations, membership organisations and charities, particularly in the health and food sectors. She was previously a City lawyer specialising in product litigation, regulation and public policy. She is an experienced
director, non-executive director a trustee.

Trustee and Treasurer

Post to be filled.