Rev’d Canon Graham Hedger: Bishop’s Policy and Liaison Officer for the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
Graham has special responsibility for links between the church and county and regional strategic bodies. He also represents the East of England Faiths Council and acts as rural lead. He is currently the chair of the Rural Forum Housing Sub Group. He is a Trustee of the Suffolk Foundation, (chairing the Grants and Governance Committee and the Grants Panel). He is on the Board of Hastoe Housing Association and also chairs the Association’s East Region Committee.
Martin Collison
Martin works as a rural and agricultural policy consultant and runs his own business, Collison and Associates Limited. His work brings him into contact with a range of clients across government, business and community sectors with most of his work now focused on rural development.
He was an academic for 16 years specialising in rural policy and international trade, and still lectures part time on food markets, policy and leadership as well as supporting a number of universities with research projects on agricultural, rural and sustainable development.
In addition to rural consultancy he has business experience as a business owner/director in the farming, education and horticultural import sectors. Martin chairs the East of England Rural Forum’s Learning and Skills sub group, and is a member of the region’s Sustainable Farming and Food Industry Group, the East of England Migrant Worker Steering Group and Fens Adventurers RDPE Local Action Group.
Sarah Hughes
Sarah is Enterprise and Regeneration Manager at Bedfordshire County Council and has been active on regeneration policy and programmes in the County for 18 years. Sarah has worked on Inward Investment and county promotion strategies, tourism development and social enterprise programmes, sustainable business to promote a greener economy as well as writing the first SRB bids for Luton / Dunstable Houghton Regis and Bedford. In 2001 she has managed a Best Value review of services to young people.
Current priorities are around skills, employment support and supporting enterprise development; responsibilities include managing the Councils ESF Co-Financing Programme, introducing EEDA’s Economic Participation programme in Bedfordshire, managing IIC funded enterprise activities and the lead on Bedfordshire’s LAA NI 152 target. Sarah also leads the Councils input to the Bedfordshire Rural Affairs Forum.
Sarah chairs the multi agency tackling poverty together group and multi agency forum for migrant workers and asylum seekers and refugees and has recently put in place a programme of additional support for frontline agencies responding to the economic downturn and rising demand for advice and debt services.
Kate Belinis
Kate is the Chief Executive of Hertfordshire Rural Community Council and also the Chair of Hertfordshire Rural Forum.
Kate is passionate about supporting and developing communities through the work of her rural team and specialists in transport, training, village halls advice and community led planning. Kate also chairs the Herts Strategic Engagement Task Group which aligns itself to the work of the county wide Local Strategic Partnership. Her other interests are social enterprise training; infrastructure support to Black and Minority Ethnic communities and advocate for rural affairs as a partner in several local strategic partnerships!
Her regional activities are Board member of Rural Action East and Chair of MENTER (Minority Ethnic Network in The Eastern Region).
Frances Bedding
Frances is the External Funding Manager for Suffolk County Council and has worked in Suffolk and Norfolk for the last 12 years – before that she worked in Hertfordshire and LB of Greenwich on town planning issues and economic development. She has worked on European, economic development and community projects since coming to Suffolk and she has a particular interest in rural development. Frances has been a member of the East of England Rural Forum since 2006. She is currently working on embedding the EEDA Economic Participation Programme within Suffolk CC which was transferred to the authority in April 2008.
Nicola Lloyd
Nicola is an applied social scientist who has worked in the public, private and voluntary sector for national and local government bodies, including the Sports Council, Commission for Racial Equality and Oxfordshire County Council. She worked for ACRE (Action with Communities in Rural England) in the mid 1990s on education, health, economic and community safety policy and then moved to Public Attitude Surveys, where she managed the 1997 Rural Services Survey.
She spent five years at Oxford City Council coordinating public consultation in partnership with the local health and police authorities. She was manager of the Evidence and Analysis programme at the Countryside Agency until March 2005 and then joined the Commission for Rural Communities as Head of Analytical Projects. As Director for Analysis, Nicola now leads the Commission’s strategic work on research and analysis as a member of the Commission’s Management Board. She grew up in Somerset, Essex and Kent and now lives in Oxfordshire.
Charles Taylor
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