I worked for over 16 years in local government .I have worked in in 4 UK local authorities (Bristol, Avon County, London Borough of Southwark and Birmingham) and Amsterdam all in a capacity that has involved working with a cross section of practitioners in addressing urban development issues in an integrated way. In addition for the past 12 years I have been Director of the Local Urban Development European Network. This has meant working in and leading cross departmental projects bringing together the local authority with community activists, researchers and residents. As such I had an important role in designing and delivering participatory methods and tools to facilitate joint working on projects and also to engender meaningful community participation in defining priorities, project planning, design and implementation. A strong focus was bringing new voices into the co-production of local policies and a myriad of regeneration projects such as developing local plans, park regeneration, implementing temporary uses, and housing developments. In practical terms I identified and brought together all relevant local players into a local partnership group comprising Councillors, council officers, community organisations, businesses, statutory agencies and local residents. I facilitated a series of meetings of this partnership group to generate ideas and to link these to existing policies and programmes in order to add value and to generate , where possible, match funding.

It is crucial that whenever possible monitoring and evaluation processes are built in from the inception of projects. I have worked on many publicly funded schemes where it is essential to monitor the value added of public money and quality of processes and outcomes. I am familiar with a range of innovative evaluation methodologies such as Difference in Differences, Randomized Control Trials and results based accountability. It is also important to ensure that alongside impact or outcome evaluation there is process evaluation. I have knowledge and experience of using a range of research, evaluation and monitoring methodologies to collect both qualitative and quantitative data involving processes such as facilitating focus groups, implementing action learning processes, creative documentation, surveys and questionnaires, participatory appraisal and peer evaluation. Essential to any monitoring and evaluation is the collection of baseline data through synthesising existing data and reports, surveys, interviews, creating photographic/film records etc. I also have experience of designing key performance indicators and monitoring systems for local area action plans, so that progress and impacts could be tracked and measured with the involvement of local residents.

Being based mostly in Brussels enables me to keep very much abreast of EU developments . I have taken part as an expert in the recent workshops convened by the EC in the development of the EU Urban Agenda. I have contributed to this process very actively and have written a paper which has been welcomed by the members of the unit in DG Regional and Urban Policy who are responsible for this work. I have also circulated this to the EP intergroup on Urban Policy and have been asked to present this at a future meeting of the group. AS such I am aware of the funding that is available through EU funds such as ESF,ESF and EAFRD. More specifically , I also aware of possibilities of funding through Horizon and Life programmes.