Programme Mentors

Each Future London Leader has been paired with a mentor from across the London Regeneration network. These mentors provide invaluable experience and insights from their own career throughout the programme.

Mentors in Round Four

Simon Bevan
Head of Planning, Regeneration and Neighbourhoods, LB Southwark

Michèle Dix
Managing Director of Planning, TfL

Michèle started her career at the Greater London Council (GLC) after completing her PhD in transport and land use planning and became a chartered civil engineer through the GLC’s transport planning graduate scheme. After 6 years of policy work, Michele joined Halcrow Fox in the private sector, where she became the Board Director of Urban Transport Planning.

After 15 years working on a range of studies Michèle joined TfL as Director of Congestion Charging; implementing, running and expanding the scheme with co-Director Malcolm Murray-Clark. Since, June 2007, Michele has been the Managing Director of Planning and leads TfL’s strategic thinking on the future transport needs of London, testing and challenging policies and providing clear direction on appropriate transport solutions for the future.

Fiona Duncan
Head of Housing, North East, GLA

Sue Foster
Executive Director of Housing, Regeneration and Enviornment, LB Lambeth

Stephen Hill
Director, C20

Stephen is an independent public interest practitioner, with many years of public and private sector experience of housing, planning and delivering mixed-use development, urban extensions, new settlements, and community-led neighbourhood regeneration.

He was recently on RICS’ Land & Society Commission and the Government-Industry Custom Build Working Group. He represents RICS on CLG’s Housing Policy Sounding Board, and the Housing Forum. He is interested in both macro and micro placemaking, and the need to connect big picture issues of infrastructure finance and delivery with the fine grain of pocket neighbourhoods.

David Lunts
Executive Director for Housing and Land, GLA

David Lunts is the Executive Director of Housing and Land at the Greater London Authority. From 2008 to May 2011 he was the Executive Director for London at the Homes and Communities Agency with responsibility for affordable housing and regeneration programmes and investment in the capital. Prior to the HCA, he was Executive Director of Policy & Partnerships at the Greater London Authority, where he managed planning, regeneration, environmental and social policy.

Paul Munday
Interim Director of Property Services, LB Hackney

Paul has had executive level involvement in regeneration, housing and development, having been Managing Director and Executive Director in both the private and social housing sectors. His roles have included control of annual budgets exceeding £120M and strategic responsibility for investment planning of £0.5Bn over 5 years and £2Bn over 30 years.

He has particular expertise in the financial elements of large scale regeneration and refurbishment projects, having managed more than 350 staff and having held direct responsibility for the project management of more than £1Bn of partnering schemes. He is a Non-executive Director of Estuary Housing Association where he is Chair of the Development Committee.

Stewart Murray
Assistant Director of Planning, GLA

Richard Parker
Partner, PWC

Richard is the Head of PwC’s Housing Finance team .He advises public and private sector clients on policy , strategy and transactions. He has advised on the largest Housing and Regeneration PPP’s that have been completed in the UK – securing over £3bn of private finance. He was a member of the HCA’s Housing Finance Group and the London Mayors Housing Investment Taskforce.

Richard also leads PwC’s policy work in the Housing sector. He led the firms housing policy review – ‘From Decent Homes to Great Places’ and published a study of American approaches to Mixed Communities ‘Investing in Hope’. He has also co-authored the ‘Hard Times’ papers that PwC published with L&Q on the future funding of affordable housing.

Anita Rivera
Senior Associate, RPC LLP

Visakha Sri Chandrasekera
Head of New Business London, Lovell Partnership

Visakha has worked for Lovell since June 2010 leading on the development of their client and strategic relationships in London. She represents them on the HBF as well as the Housing Forum, and has been a member of the Mayor’s Development Group. Lovell is part of the Morgan Sindall Group and Visakha works with other companies in the group to support the development of new products. Currently this includes work on a model for developing affordable housing without public subsidy and delivering local asset backed vehicles with both local authorities and housing associations. Visakha previously worked for two London boroughs, the Housing Corporation and the HCA, where she was Deputy Director for Investment in London.

Stephen Tapper
Independent Planning Consultant

Stephen is Vice President Emeritus of the Planning Officers Society. Previously Chair of the Sustainability and Rural Planning Committee, he has long promoted the creative use of planning policy and regulations to encourage more sustainable building. He is currently working on the Housing Standards Review and various planning and design sounding boards.

Stephen has senior level experience at a variety of councils across England delivering a wide range of planning, transportation and regeneration services. For 15 years he was the Assistant Director at the London Borough of Enfield, where he oversaw a new “place shaping” regeneration strategy. Stephen now has his own consultancy, and is leading for East Herts Council on on a 2500 home development in Bishop’s Stortford.

Neil Toner
Partner, Lewis Silkin LLP

Neil Toner is a partner in the Real Estate & Development Department of Lewis Silkin, a city based law firm. He has been with the firm since he joined as a trainee in 1989. He works for clients in the public, private and third sectors delivering development projects ranging from office blocks, through housing estates to schools and medical centres. Even a tunnel project under London and a bridge over the River Roding.

Paul Walker
Associate Director – Regeneration, Planning and Programme Management, LB Enfield

Mentors in Round Five

Mark Baigent
Project Director, Housing Services, RB Greenwich

Mark joined Greenwich Council in 2003 and is a Project Director responsible for housing strategy, third sector commissioning, asset management, estate regeneration and investment in new supply.

Current projects include: delivery of the Decent Homes programme for 22,000 tenants; major estate renewal schemes in Woolwich and Kidbrooke; procurement of the Greenwich Peninsula low carbon heat network for over 10,000 homes and substantial commercial premises; enabling and shaping investment by registered providers to deliver new homes as well as leading delivery of the Council’s own ongoing new build programme; and, providing intermediate rented homes for working families in Greenwich through Meridian Home Start Ltd, a Council-owned special purpose vehicle.

Mark is also Chair of the South East London Housing Partnership and the Olympic Growth Boroughs Housing theme group.

Richard Blakeway
Deputy Mayor for Housing, Land and Property, Greater London Authority

Richard is responsible for overseeing the Mayor’s statutory housing powers, including £3 billion of investment and around 600 hectares of land, following the transfer of functions and assets from the London Homes and Communities Agency and the London Development Agency to the GLA. He also has strategic oversight of the land of the GLA Group and the Mayor’s statutory housing strategy.

Richard is a Young Ambassador for the Samaritans and Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts. He is a non executive director of the Chartered Institute of Housing, and chairs the Homes for London board.

Read Richard’s full online biography here

Anne Byrne
Programme Manager, Woodberry Down, LB Hackney

John Dales
Director, Urban Movement

John Dales is Director of Urban Movement, a consultancy specialising in transport planning and innovative designs for busy urban streets, the public realm around stations, and provision for cycling. He worked previously for JMP Consultants, the London Borough of Newham and Urban Initiatives. He’s been responsible for the recent reworking of several London streets, such as in Camden, Clapham and Harrow, and for urban realm design development at numerous Crossrail stations. He’s a champion of good urban design in transport schemes and a design advisor to several UK local authorities.

Ben Denton
Strategic Director for Housing, Regeneration & Property, City of Westminster

Ros Dunn
Independent Chair, South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust

Pat Hayes
Executive Director of Regeneration and Housing, LB Ealing

Pat Hayes has been Ealing’s Executive Director for Regeneration & Housing since 2007.

In this role he has been responsible for redevelopments such as Dickens Yard and the new data centre in Ealing Broadway, alongside upcoming projects such as South Acton Housing Estate and the former Southall Gasworks site.

Before joining Ealing, Pat worked for TfL as Director of Borough Partnerships, and prior to that spent over four years as Lewisham’s Executive Director for Regeneration and Environment. Pat has also worked for 5 other boroughs during a twenty plus year career in local government.

Peter Mercer
Assistant Director, Maintenance, Peabody

Conor Moloney
Head of Regions & Communities, Bioregional Development Group

Conor Moloney is a planner and geographer with a background in architecture and urban design. His core expertise is in strategic planning, sustainable placemaking, and neighbourhood development. He leads the Regions & Communities team at BioRegional since 2012, working in partnership with communities, local authorities, housing associations, developers and other partners to develop practical solutions for sustainability.

Previously, Conor was a Senior Associate at planning, transport and urban design consultancy Urban Initiatives, a researcher at London School of Economics, and was a founding member of University of Ulster’s ‘Yellow Space’ advocacy project, supporting civil society leadership in built environment issues in post-conflict Northern Ireland. He holds an MSc International Planning from UCL (2011), an MSc in Human Geography from LSE (2003), and an architectural degree from University College Dublin (1993, RIBA Parts I & II). He is a licentiate member of the Royal Town Planning Institute.

Maggie Rafalowicz
Senior Associate Consultant, Campbell Tickell

Brendon Walsh
Director of Regeneration, Economic Development and Environment, LB Hounslow

Tony Westbrook
Head of Regeneration, Strategic Planning and Regeneration Service, LB Barnet