London Advisory Committee

Membership

Charles O'Brien - Chair

Anna Bond
Patricia Brown
Nicole Crockett
Elizabeth Darling
Ben Derbyshire
Jon Grantham
Tanvir Hasan
Rosemarie MacQueen MBE
Roger Mascall
Richard Pollard
Amir Ramezani
Richard Upton
Sadie Watson

Observer

Nairita Chakraborty

Biographies

Charles O’Brien - Chair

Charles O’Brien is an architectural historian. He worked for the Historic Buildings Department of the National Trust (1994 to 1997), and is the Series Editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides, including the Buildings of Scotland series. He has contributed to several volumes in the Buildings of England series including (with Bridget Cherry) London 5: East and most recently the revision of Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire and Peterborough (2014).

Charles has been a sessional lecturer at Birkbeck College on social housing in London, is a member of the Victoria County History’s Advisory Board, the Arts and Heritage Committee of the Mercers’ Company and is also a member of the English Heritage Advisory Committee.

Nicole Crockett

Nicole Crockett PhD is an engagement specialist with an established track record of partnership working, project management and stakeholder involvement. She works as a consultant across the private, public and voluntary sectors to support the delivery of complex user focused projects and programmes. She strives to engage wide ranging stakeholder groups, including those that are harder to reach in change initiatives, working in collaboration with heritage and regeneration professionals and design teams. Through her work she aims to ensure that local people inform the development of masterplans and regeneration projects and that social and economic priorities are delivered. She has a particular interest in Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action Zones Programme.

Nicole was director of the Building Exploratory for many years and before that assistant director at the Architecture Foundation. She has a PhD in Social History from Edinburgh University and was made an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA for services to architecture in 2011.

Elizabeth Darling

Elizabeth Darling PhD is Reader in Architectural History at Oxford Brookes University and lectures in the art and architectural history of the modern period. Her research focuses on 20th century British architectural history with a particular interest in inter-war modernist culture, social housing, and gender. She has published on the nature of authorship in the design process; the innovative practices of the inter-war voluntary housing sector; the housing consultant Elizabeth Denby; the relationship between citizenship and the reform of domestic space in inter-war Britain; and women and urban philanthropy in Edwardian Edinburgh.

Her books include a revisionist study of British architectural modernism, Re-forming Britain: Narratives of Modernity before Reconstruction, (Routledge, 2007), Wells Coates (C20 Society with English Heritage & RIBA Publishing, 2012) and AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017 (AA Publishing, 2017). She is writing a study of the material and spatial cultures of broadcasting in inter-war England.

Ben Derbyshire

Ben is Chair of HTA Design LLP, a leading multidisciplinary design practice specialising in housing and placemaking where his role also includes directing the practice’s internal design review processes.

He is a Commissioner of Historic England, Chair of the Historic Places Panel, and a member of the High Streets HAZ Strategic Programme Board.

Ben is President of the London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies and is a current member of the NHBC Council.

He was President of RIBA from 2017 to 2019 where he oversaw fundamental change in the financing and governance of the institute and the instigation of policies in relation to climate action, professional competence and codes of conduct.

Jon Grantham

Jon Grantham is Managing Director of LUC. He is a Chartered Town Planner with over 35 years’ experience. His first job was as a Planning Assistant with Forest Heath District Council in Suffolk. He moved to London in 1985 to take up a post in the Regional Planning Division of the Department of the Environment and joined LUC in late 1985.

He has secured planning consent for many major projects and managed the preparation of EIAs for a variety of development projects. He has particular expertise in education, sport, heritage, infrastructure, energy, and water, gained on behalf of a wide range of clients. He has served terms of office on the RTPI Partnership Boards for Anglia Ruskin University, the University of Westminster (current) and Oxford Brookes University, the latter as Vice-Chair. He is a past Chair of Planning Aid for London.

In his spare time, Jon walks, runs, skis and watches live sport and bands. He is Vice-President of Brentham Cricket Club in Ealing.

Rosemarie MacQueen MBE

Rosemarie has over 44 years’ experience of urban planning, conservation, heritage management and regeneration. She has provided expert evidence on conservation issues to parliamentary select committees and her voluntary roles include 20+ years of service on the Georgian Group Executive Committee and as London Chairman of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation. Rosemarie was awarded the MBE for services to Heritage in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Rosemarie was appointed as an Historic England Commissioner in 2016.

Roger Mascall

Roger Mascall is a Chartered Town Planner and heritage professional with 25 years’ experience of planning and heritage matters in both the public and private sectors.  He is currently Director and Head of Heritage Services at Turley Planning Consultants, leading a team which provides advice to public and private sector clients across the UK. 

Roger was previously a partner at the Development Planning Partnership, having started his career in local government at Harrow.  He was an Inspector of Historic Buildings and Areas, and Team Leader at English Heritage and has since acted on its behalf at major public inquiries in London and the South East.

He assists the British Property Federation with heritage matters and sits on the CLG/DCMS practitioners’ sounding board.  Roger is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and Institute for Historic Building Conservation.

Richard Pollard

Richard Pollard is an architectural historian and conservation advisor. He is currently a Director in the conservation team at Alan Baxter, where he advises public and private sector clients across the country. Recent projects include a masterplan for York Minster and precinct, multiple Network Rail and Crossrail schemes, advice to the Imperial War Museum and other cultural institutions, and conservation management plans for the National Trust, English Heritage and Liverpool Cathedral.

In previous incarnations Richard was a researcher and author for Pevsner Architectural Guides, working on three volumes in the north, and before that the Secretary of SAVE Britain’s Heritage. He is a Trustee of the Ancient Monuments Society and the Spitalfields Trust, and a member of the SAVE casework committee.

Amir Ramezani

Amir is a director of Avanti Architects and trained as an architect and structural engineer.  Following his studies he worked for Antony Hunt Associates, Terry Farrell Partnership and Jestico & Whiles before joining Avanti Architects in 1994. During the past 20 years he has been responsible for a number of award-winning projects and high profile competition schemes across the arts and culture, education, residential, and commercial sectors.

Amir has extensive expertise in sustainable development, masterplanning, the design of new buildings and repair, alteration and adaptive reuse of listed and historic buildings and the development of innovative and holistic conservation and regeneration schemes.  Amir is also an assessor for the Civic Trust Awards.

Richard Upton

Richard Upton is the Founder and Chief Executive of Cathedral Group Plc – a mixed use property development company based in an 18th Century chapel at London Bridge.  In May 2014, Cathedral was acquired by Development Securities PLC, and Richard joined its main board. 

Richard has led Cathedral since its creation in 1998 as a part of Mount Anvil Plc a house builder he also founded. Richard has 25 years experience of mixed use development, involving many historic buildings and has lectured widely on the optimum use of public property for socio-economic growth.
 
Richard has been a Governor of Leisure Link, a not for profit provider of leisure services in the London Borough of Bexley, a Governor of Rose Bruford Drama College (where he held the position of Chair of Estates), a member of the Eltham Regeneration Board and currently sits on Historic England’s London Advisory Committee.

Sadie Watson

Sadie Watson PhD is an urban archaeologist at MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), with over 20 years experience directing complex multi-phase projects, predominantly in the City of London. Major fieldwork projects Sadie has supervised include Paternoster Square, Bloomberg London and Sugar Quay (Old Custom House) on the Thames waterfront.

Completed in 2015, her PhD analysed the contracting archaeological sector with reference to the contribution to knowledge from these major projects, concepts that were further developed during a period spent as Archaeologist in Residence at the MacDonald Institute, University of Cambridge.

Since 2019 Sadie has been undertaking a 4-year UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, aiming at ensuring that development-led archaeology leads to meaningful and relevant research and genuine community participation.

Sadie is an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.

Index of Agenda Items

If you would like to obtain copies of any meeting papers, please email us at [email protected].

Declarations of Interest

Registers of Interest are maintained for Commission, the Historic England Advisory Committee, the London Advisory Committee and for the Historic England Executive Team. They record any significant, ongoing interest which a member may have and are reviewed by the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee twice each year.

If a member has an interest on a specific case to be discussed at a meeting this should be declared at the start of the meeting and recorded in the minutes.