Dr Suzanne Audrey

Senior Research Fellow in Public Health and Co-director of SHINE (Supporting Healthy Inclusive Neighbourhood Environments, Bristol Medical School

Suzanne Audrey is Senior Research Fellow in Public Health at the University of Bristol, with an interest in the health benefits of walking as an everyday activity. She is co-director of the SHINE (Supporting Healthy Inclusive Neighbourhood Environments) health integration team with Bristol Health Partners, focusing on the infrastructure and polices required to support healthy neighbourhoods. She is an executive member of Bristol Walking Alliance and campaigns for improvements to the pedestrian environment. Before her academic career, Suzanne was a community development worker in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Bristol and Glasgow.

Dame Sarah Storey

Active Travel Commissioner, Sheffield City Region

Dame Sarah Storey is Britain’s most successful female Paralympian, with 14 gold medals to her name in both cycling and swimming and more than 30 World Champion titles. In April 2019, Dame Sarah was appointed as Active Travel Commissioner for the Sheffield City Region, a role which involves working alongside Mayor Dan Jarvis to create a region in which more people travel on foot, by bike or by public transport. 

Dame Sarah has set out four pledges which will define her work as Active Travel Commissioner. These are: being led by communities; enabling walking and cycling rather than encouraging it; requiring infrastructure to meet or exceed requirements; and requiring infrastructure to be accessible for all. A passionate advocate of walking and cycling, Dame Sarah is determined to inspire a new way of thinking about travelling by bike or on foot in the region. Through listening to communities and speaking to politicians, she aims to enable more people to choose to leave the car at home and travel in a way which is healthy for body, mind and the environment.

Find out more about the Sheffield City Region transport vision at www.sheffieldcityregion.org.uk/transport.

Jim Bradley

Director, ITP

Jim is a Director of ITP with 25 years’ experience in the design, delivery and evaluation of sustainable transport strategies and policy-shaping research studies for key clients in the UK and internationally. He has a track record of delivering projects to understand the impact of behavioural change initiatives and specialist experience of assessing accessibility, inclusion and social equity issues. He is a respected Smarter Travel practitioner, a Member of the Market Research Society and oversees ITP’s portfolio of work in London including the delivery of recent demand management research and inclusive design projects for TfL, GLA and London Councils.  When not at work you’ll find him chasing after his two young children or following Aston Villa's mixed fortunes in the Premier League.

Twitter @ITPtweet

Andy Martin

Transformational Schemes Sponsor, Transport for London

Andy is a social scientist and urban planner with a passion for creating equitable cities. He joined TfL in 2016 and currently works within Investment Delivery Planning overseeing the delivery of transformational Healthy Streets schemes. Andy is an expert in urban masterplanning as well as the planning and delivery of walkable neighbourhoods within both strategic and localised contexts. 

Previously he has worked within TfL City Planning, Urban Design London, and on secondment to various London boroughs, to develop and deliver the core social, environmental and mobility objectives outlined by the London Plan and the Mayor’s Transport Strategy.

Having also worked and studied in various cities in Latin America, Andy recently led a research project on the contextual application of TfL’s street types and healthy streets frameworks outside of London, including the creation of a sustainable streets model and delivery framework applied to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo.

Jess Read

Principal Transport Engineer, Witteveen+Bos UK

Jess Read has over 18 years experience delivering walking and cycling projects in places like Bristol, London, Copenhagen, Oslo and Portland, Oregon. She recently led the “iWalk - innovations in inclusive walking” project based in Bristol City Council. The iWalk project identifies 10 pragmatic innovations to better embed inclusive walking in day-to-day transport practice (https://issuu.com/witteveenbos/docs/iwalk_wb). Jess was the technical design lead for the award-winning Copenhagen Blue-Green Infrastructure Masterplan (2011-2014). This project developed a new design standard for Copenhagen street upgrades, which through an innovative co-financing approach has liberated an additional £500m investment in walking, cycling and green infrastructure in Copenhagen

Habib Khan

Director & Founding Partner, Meristem Design

Habib has spent the last 15 years in sustainable transport. He started with the UK’s first bike share scheme in 2005, going onto to manage all the UK offices of City Car Club before rolling out fully managed on-street cycle parking concept called Bike Hangars.

Habib is now a Director & Founding Partner at Meristem Design, the award winning urban greening / design company.He set up Meristem Design almost three years ago, with 40 living walls and 30 on-street Parklets already completed.

Meristem are on a mission to turn the "Urban Grey Green" with innovative public realm projects working with councils, housing associations, schools and corporates.  They recently installed one of the largest Parklets in Europe measuring 80 sq mtrs in Perth and have developed a Parklet toolkit for councils wanting to know how to install them on their streets.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeristemDesign

Christine Elphicke

Technical Director, WSP

Christine Elphicke (née Palmer) is a Technical Director at WSP, she has over 16 years’ experience within the transport modelling discipline, working with both private and public sector clients. She leads the transport modelling team at WSP’s London offices which offers a full range of transport and pedestrian modelling expertise. 

Christine studied Geography at Durham University, a choice which was driven by her passion for a deeper understanding about the environment, people and places around us.  This has continued into her career in transport, where she has been able to understand, influence and improve transport.

Most recently she has led projects for local authorities using transport models to assess the impact of various interventions in improving air quality.  Christine is delighted to be presenting at this conference and hopes her presentation provides an interesting insight into how transport models can be used to improve air quality for local authorities.

Annabel Matharu

Highway Services, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council

Annabel Matharu has been a Sustainable Travel Officer at Solihull MBC for over 10 years and is currently overseeing the Education strand of the Solihull Clean Air Strategy. She works with schools to encourage sustainable travel and helps them create their own Green Travel Plans. She also manages a Business Support Team that specialises in offering advice to local businesses to help them promote greener active travel amongst their employees.

Prior to joining Solihull she worked at Warwickshire County Council for over six years in road safety education’

David Gillam

Senior Designer, City ID

With over 10 years experience at City ID, David specialises in the development and delivery of wayfinding and mobility programs that improve people’s understanding and experience of place. 

David leads on user-centred design thinking and strategy development, helping to deliver innovative projects for complex urban and transport environments. David has experience across a range of projects, notably working for clients such as Transport for London, Moscow Department of Transport and New York City Department of Transportation. 

David is currently working on the next phase of Bristol Legible City and leading the strategic development of an ambitious wayfinding project for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Twitter Accounts

@City_ID

@David__Gillam

Neil Anderson

Technical Director, Amey Consulting

Neil has been a transport planning professional for over 40 years, in both public and private sector. His achievements include convincing business cases for active mode, bus, rail and highway schemes, all within the context of wider social, health, environmental and economic policies and the political dimension. Neil works closely with other specialists, including design teams and public health to develop a sound narrative through which to apply the appraisal rules and make successful bids for funding.

Stephen Peacock

Executive Director: Growth and Regeneration, Bristol City Council

Stephen Peacock took over as Executive Director: Growth and Regeneration in November 2019, and will be working in collaboration with council colleagues, external agencies and partners to help deliver the commitments of the One City Plan. Stephen will also lead major projects such as the transformation of Temple Meads Station, Western Harbour, revitalisation of the city centre and bringing forward housing sites.

Stephen has experience of economic development, major regeneration projects, technology and the energy sector. He is well connected in the south-west having spent several years working with Bristol and other local authorities in the region as Executive Director of the South West Regional Development Agency. 

He will also be responsible for a wide range of key services and initiatives including planning, highways and transport, housing and landlord services, property, parks, libraries, culture and heritage, City Leap and theresponse to the climate emergency.

Katja Stille 

Director,  Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design

Katja Stille is a Director of Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, an award-winning planning and urban design consultancy, and Treasurer of the Urban Design Group.

As an experienced urban designer she works collaboratively across professional boundaries to deliver high quality places. Working with private and public sector clients, as well as communities, Katja’s objective is to push the placemaking agenda and ensure we are building people-friendly places. Her work ranges across a broad spectrum, including strategic masterplanning, the creation of new communities, regeneration projects and design advice. 

Katja seeks to unlock the issues that prevent us from delivering good design and placemaking. Currently one of her projects is delivering Northstowe, a new town in Cambridgeshire, promoted by Homes England, and one of the NHS’s Healthy New Towns. Her work incorporates principles of health and well-being from early masterplanning stages through to design codes and delivery. 

Geoff Burrage 

Associate Director, ITP

Geoff is motivated by the vital role transport can play in delivering healthier, happier and more sustainable places. He has worked extensively providing creative transport and movement input to masterplans, public realm schemes, developments and transport and planning strategies across London and the UK.

Amanda Downes

Healthy Equity, Welfare and Partnerships, Public Health, Lancashire County Council

Amanda is a fully qualified primary school teacher who worked as a Road Safety Officer and Sustainable Travel Adviser before taking up her current post in Public Health at Lancashire County Council. As a keen cyclist, her role includes submitting applications for projects which include Preston's Guild Wheel, the East Lancashire Strategic Cycleway and more recently the Connecting East Lancashire Access Fund bid. Amanda works with Community Safety Partnerships and thrives on seeing the impact that her work has on helping people gain access to employment and learning opportunities, reducing crime and improving the quality of life for Lancashire's residents.

Twitter: @ConnectELancs

Pam Turton

Assistant Director, Transport Regeneration Directorate, Portsmouth City Council

Inclusive and accessible connectivity is vital to all aspects of our society and I am proud to work in an industry which helps to improve people's mobility and reduce our collective impact on the environment.

At Portsmouth City Council I lead five diverse areas which work together to deliver improved connectivity and mobility: Transport Strategy, Network Management, Parking and Enforcement, Air Quality Improvement and Safer Travel.

I am also SRO for two programmes which I am particularly passionate about:

South East Hampshire Rapid Transit:  an ambitious partnership between Portsmouth, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to deliver a transformational rapid transit network across the Portsmouth city region, addressing the considerable connectivity challenges which have a significant negative impact on productivity, air quality and social inclusion

Air Quality Improvement Programme: a range of transport initiatives to improve Portsmouth's air quality, including the delivery of a clean air zone.

Twitter: @turtonpam

Dr Jenny Wood

Research Associate at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research (I-SPHERE), Heriot-Watt University, and Co-founder A Place in Childhood (APiC)

Jenny has a BSc (Hons) in Urban and Regional Planning, and seven years of experience in engaging, consulting and researching with and for children. She completed her PhD at Heriot-Watt University in 2016, entitled ‘Space to Participate: children’s rights and the Scottish town planning system’. This was the first Scotland-based study on planning and children, and one of few in the UK context.

Jenny works at I-SPHERE, Heriot-Watt University, contributing to a range of projects and publications on poverty, homelessness, and child-friendly policy. In 2018, she co-founded Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, A Place in Childhood (APiC), to promote and conceive inclusive child friendly environments through practice-based research, advocacy and action.

Carl Petrokofsky

Public Health Specialist Advisor, Healthy Places, Public Health England

Carl is a Public Health Specialist who has worked for the NHS, Department of Health and Public Health England for over 40 years. Between 2013 – June 2018, he led and managed the ‘Healthy Places’ programme. The Healthy Places programme focusses on how spatial planning of the built and natural environment and the design of housing and the public realm; active travel and transport; and access to green infrastructure can promote better health and wellbeing.

Following his partial retirement in Sept 2018, Carl has continued to work part-time as a Public Health Specialist Advisor to the Healthy Places.

Carl is also a Visiting Professor at the University of the West of England (UWE), working with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments.

Simon O'Brien

Cycling and Walking Commissioner, Liverpool City Region

Actor, TV presenter and environmentalist, Simon O’Brien is the Liverpool City Region's cycling and walking commissioner.
Simon, who first rose to fame as as Damon Grant and has been acting and presenting ever since on programmes such as Rough Guide and To Buy Or Not To Buy, is about to take time off from his current award winning Channel 4 series 'Find It, Fix It, Flog It' to be tasked with revolutionising the city’s cycling offer by linking up Liverpool’s major green spaces with a series of new routes.

Having swapped the car for his beloved bike 35 years ago, Simon, who once ran a cycling café in the city centre, is uniquely positioned to carry out the new role having led a major review into Liverpool’s parks and cycled more than 1,500 miles to explore potential routes.

Karen Stevens

Senior Transport Officer (Policy) St.Helens Council

Karen has been part of the Transport Policy Team at St Helens Council for more than a year. She has over 15 years of sustainable transport experience, including project management of cycling and walking infrastructure schemes and behaviour change projects. 

Cllr Suzanne Bartington

Cycling Champion, Oxfordshire County Council

Suzanne grew up in Oxfordshire, returning to the local area after completing a medical degree at the University of Cambridge and postgraduate education at UCL and Imperial College London.

She has served as a Witney Town Councillor since May 2015 and was elected as Oxfordshire County Councillor for Witney North & East Division in May 2017.

In her professional life Suzanne is a Public Health Registrar and holds a Clinical Lecturer position at the University of Birmingham.

Her research interests concern lifecourse, epidemiology, intematinal health policy and child health.  She is a committed advocate of sustainable development, social justice and health improvement.

Sally Hogg

Public Health Consultant, Bristol City Council

Sally Hogg was appointed to the post of Consultant in Public Health, Healthy lifestyles, Healthy Place at Bristol City Council in 2016. With over 30 years’ experience in the NHS as a nurse, school nurse, health visitor and specialist in public health, she was joint founder of Healthy Ambitions Suffolk, moving it from a public sector initiative to a Community Interest Company and Charity.

Sally is passionate about reducing health inequalities and addressing the wider determinants of health by partnership working and ensuring that public health is everyone’s business. Sally was accepted onto the UK Public Health Speciality Register in 2012 and is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health.

Laurence Oakes-Ash

Co-founder and CEO, City Science

Previously holding senior trading positions at Investment banks in London and New York Laurence spent his career bringing together vast complex data sets and developing systems to create actionable insights. An adept operator, lead generator and strategist, he managed £30bn of annual deal flow and was consistently achieving a #1 market share on the London Stock Exchange. This exposure to real-time data and automation within Financial Services fired Laurence’s interest in its applications to cities. Laurence is an award-winning management accountant and member of the CIHT. Laurence now lives in Devon, where in his spare time (i.e. rarely), he likes sailing and eating barbeque (with brisket, pulled pork and mac n cheese – New York style).

Andi Adams

Transport planner, Stantec

I am a Bristol-based transport planner who brings the health focus of my previous NHS career to my engineering practice through enhancing the potential of transport and built environment policies and schemes to promote health, wellbeing, equality, accessibility and sustainability outcomes for the communities they serve.

My work commonly involves undertaking Equality Impact Assessments (EqIA) and 'critical friend' design input, Part M Accessibility Audits, policy input, strategic scheme planning, travel plans and personalised travel planning, together with traditional transport planning activities. Please contact me if you would like to discuss how I can add value to your policy or scheme.

Dr Ian Walker

Transport and Traffic Psychologist, Univeristy of Bath

I teach statistics and traffic psychology at the University of Bath and do research on road safety, travel choices, energy consumption, water use and the built environment.
My research focuses particularly on unconscious and low-awareness causes of everyday behaviour like habits, the environment around us and unconscious stereotypes.

My work includes a focus on drivers overtaking bicyclists, a study showing how people buying cars are more concerned about looking and feeling good than they are about the environment, and a study on reducing household energy consumption through 'smart' value-framed messages. I think electric cars encourage people to keep living in inefficient and harmful ways rather than address real questions about our way of life.

My work has seen me collaborate with such bodies as the Department for Transport, Wessex Water, Western Power Distribution. RWE npower, SaveWaterSaveMoney, Transportøkonomisk institutt Norway, lots of local authorities, and Cycling England.

Kevin O’Sullivan

Founder and principal solicitor, Cycle Legal

Kevin O’Sullivan, has over 15 years specialising in cycle law. As a cyclist himself, Kevin was keen to set up a boutique law firm dedicated solely to representing cyclists – one that could work side by side with the client, offer them reassurance and personal support throughout the legal process, get them the settlement they deserve, and get them back to their life as quickly and painlessly as possible. And so in early 2016 he created Cycle Legal.

Kevin says: 'I wanted to create a fully independent law firm just for cyclists, with no hidden ties to a corporate law firm or medical agency, with no alternative departments for motorists or clients who might need a little conveyancing or wills and probate. I wanted to cut out the layers of bureaucracy and focus solely on representing cyclists. So I created Cycle Legal. It’s what I care about and it’s what I do.'

Mariana Barrios Cabrera

Business Development, Vivacity Labs

Tanya Braun

Head of Policy and Communciations, Living Streets

I head up a team of PR and policy experts, with my main role consisting of devising marketing, PR and influencing strategies. Having worked in journalism, before PR, I have experience on both sides of media relations and have added communications, marketing and policy to my expertise in recent years. I head up a team of seven - which is reflected through a recent PR Team of the Year Award win and success in influencing recent transport policy changes (such as Pavement Parking in Scotland). I enjoy building relationships and working on innovative new ways of increasing profile through a range of communications channels.

Paul McGarry

Strategic Lead for Age friendly Manchester and GM ageing Hub

Paul McGarry is the Head of the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub, part of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority tasked with making Greater Manchester the UK’s first Age-Friendly city region. Since 2003 he has led the Age Friendly Manchester Programme at Manchester City Council, formerly called Valuing Older People. Under Paul’s leadership, Manchester became the first UK city to achieve WHO Age Friendly status and was a founding member of both the WHO’s Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities and the UK Network of Age-Friendly Cities.

Dr Ellen Schwartz

Public Health Consultant, Croydon Council

Ian Plowright

Head of Transport, Planning and Strategic Transport, London Borough of Croydon

Ian has worked in Transport Planning since the latter part of the 1980s. Except for brief stints working at the DfT and in academia, he has worked for local authorities in central, inner and outer London. His main areas of focus include:

• Policy development and plan making

• Transport implications of built development proposals

• Healthy and sustainable transport

• Major transport projects

Stephen Edwards

Director of Policy & Communications, Living Streets

Stephen brings a wealth of public affairs experience, having spent 18 years advising organisations on their public relations and communications strategies, most recently as Deputy Managing Partner of Interel Group in the UK. Stephen has worked with a range of charities, both as a trustee and as an adviser. He says: 'As a passionate walker, I leapt at the opportunity to work for a purpose-driven organisation like Living Streets which is dealing with issues that make a difference to everyday walking.

'As a parent of young children and a school governor, I'm particularly looking forward to being involved in the important work being done to encourage and enable more children to walk to school. I am excited about working with a great team to shift the dial in favour of pedestrians across the UK.'

James Freeman

Managing Director, First West of England 

James manages the local bus company with services operating in and around Bristol, Bath, Wells & Weston-s-Mare.

Emma Ciclitira

Public Health Programmes and Commissioning Manager, St Helens Council

Emma has worked in the Public Health team in St Helens since 2013 and leads on Healthy Weight, Physical Activity, Workplace Health and Falls Prevention. Emma has a Masters in Public Health and over 10 years’ experience in the field. Before joining the Council Emma worked for the British Heart Foundation, NHS and Asylum Link Merseyside.

Helen Fairhurst

Local Project Manager, Love to Ride Lancashire

Helen worked as a Road Safety Officer and Sustainable Travel Adviser for Lancashire County Council for over 10 years before joining the Love to Ride team in 2018.  Helen’s role is to improve health and wellbeing through increased cycling participation across East Lancashire. Helen enjoys cycling and is passionate about encouraging others to enjoy the many benefits it brings. Helen's wide experience as Road Safety Officer means that she relates to the barriers that can deter 'would be cyclists'! Our challenge is to help remove those barriers and to create new cycling opportunities for everyone. 

Twitter: @lovetoridelancs

Graham Paul Smith

Urban design consultant

Sean Peacock

Researcher, Open Lab, Newcastle University

Sean is a PhD researcher based at Open Lab, Newcastle University. Working in a research group investigating digital forms of participatory citizenship, he is researching how digital technologies can support young people to make better cities for the future. His professional background is as an urban planner, working in London and North East England before returning to university. Through his research, he has developed expertise in designing methods to involve young people in important local issues. He also serves as a trustee of A Place in Childhood, a Scottish charity promoting child-friendly environments through research, advocacy and action.

Twitter: @seanpeacock_