Peter Aiers joined the Churches Conservation Trust in 2007 and set up the Regeneration Taskforce to find  solutions to complex historic church problems and enable more community involvement in the care and maintenance of our wonderful portfolio. Became Director for the South East in 2012 with a specific responsibility for overall Operational Management. Peter has raised well over £12m since being with the CCT and has led on several innovative projects such as the award winning All Souls Bolton, Champing and St Peter and the Old Black Lion.

After a good career start in English Heritage, Peter worked as a local authority conservation officer and moved from local government to be the first conservation officer employed in the Church of England, working for the Diocese of London DAC. Whilst working as a conservation officer Peter noticed that there was a need to further support parishes in the maintenance and sustainability of the historic buildings in their care and his role evolved into a Project Development Manager. As well as finding sustainable solutions to historic church buildings, through grant aid and commercial development, he also set up a centralised Gutter Maintenance service for the Diocese of London to provide low cost, high quality maintenance for churches.

Peter is passionate about ensuring that Parish Churches remain part of the fabric of England and that as wide an audience as possible is able to enjoy their art, history and architecture.

Brian Ayers is currently a Research Fellow and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia.

He was Assistant Head of Museums & County Archaeologist for Norfolk until 2008. Thereafter he became the Chief Executive of the Butrint Foundation until the end of 2011 (for which organisation he continues as a consultant) and which works to secure preservation of the World Heritage Site of Butrint in Albania.

He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (where he is currently the Hon. Secretary) and of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, a trustee of Hungate Medieval Art (a trust located in the church of St Peter Hungate, Norwich), a member of the ICOMOS-UK Cultural Tourism Committee and a member of the East of England Advisory Board of the National Trust. In addition he leads archaeological tours of Viking Age sites in Britain and Scandinavia.

He has published numerous papers, principally concerning urban archaeology, and is the author of an archaeological history of the city of Norwich. He is currently writing a book with the provisional title of Medieval Europe around the North Sea.

Darren began his career in 1984 working on timber-framed buildings and from 1992 as a conservator. From 1997 he has worked as a Conservation Officer and has a track record in securing funding and creating viable end uses for redundant buildings and spaces.  Since 2001, he has been the Conservation Officer at Great Yarmouth and from 2010 has also worked as the Project Director for Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust.  Darren has established and manages a number of European conservation and training projects.

Dave Chetwyn is Managing Director of Urban Vision Enterprise CIC, Chair of the Historic Towns Forum and Vice Chair of the National Planning Forum.  He is also an Associate of The Consultation Institute and a Design Council CABE Built Environment Expert.  Former roles include Head of Planning Aid England, Chair of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation and a team leader in Local Government.

Dave is the author of the Locality Roadmap Guide to Neighbourhood Planning and has acted as a neighbourhood plan independent examiner.  He has advised various Government departments, groups, reviews and Parliamentary select committees on planning, regeneration, heritage, urban design and community engagement.

Jonathan Foyle is an architectural historian, broadcaster and advocate for heritage sites and a Visiting Professor at the University of Lincoln. After a full architectural training and an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, he worked as a surveyor on Canterbury Cathedral.  For eight years he was Curator of Historic Buildings at Historic Royal Palaces,  and the early history of Hampton Court was the subject of his PhD thesis. He is a frequent broadcaster on historic architecture including the award-winning BBC series Climbing Great Buildings and Henry VIII: Patron or Plunderer. He writes regularly for the Financial Times and is author of The Architecture of Canterbury Cathedral (2012) and Lincoln Cathedral The Biography of a Great Building (2015)

Kate Clark is an industrial archaeologist who has worked with Ironbridge Gorge Museums, the Council for British Archaeology and with English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund.   Most recently she was Director of Sydney Living Museums where she led a programme of renewal and rebranding aimed at connecting heritage with new audiences.  She has also been working on a heritage asset strategy for the management of heritage assets for the New South Wales Government.  She has published widely on industrial archaeology, values-based management and on heritage policy and research. Her special interest lies in capturing the wider public value and benefits of caring for heritage and in creative ways to engage people better with heritage.

Dr Sharman Kadish is Director of Jewish Heritage UK. (See www.jewish-heritage-uk.org/). She was born in London and educated at University College London and St Antony’s College Oxford and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has taught at the Universities of London and Manchester and is author of a number of books on Anglo-Jewish history and heritage, including companion architectural guides Jewish Heritage in England (first edition 2006) and Jewish Heritage in Gibraltar (2007). Her recent book The Synagogues of Britain and Ireland: An Architectural and Social History (Yale University Press 2011) was shortlisted for the American Society of Historians of British Art Prize in 2013. A second edition of her UK guidebook is due to be published this year by English Heritage.

Greg Luton is Planning and Conservation Director in the East of England and since April 2015, with the creation of the new national heritage body 'Historic England', he has been championing its work in the region.  He and his team of archaeologists, architectural historians, scientists, architects and surveyors provide specialist advice to the public and to the planning authorities on all matters relating to historic places.

Earlier, Greg was an assistant regional director for English Heritage in the South East with additional responsibilities for properties open to the public, including Osborne House, Porchester Castle and Northington Grange, the home of Grange Park Opera.  He is Chairman of the Historic Environment Forum in the East and until recently was Trustee of 'Shape East' the regional architecture centre, promoting good, new design in historic buildings.  Previously, he was Director of a building preservation trust and was a county secretary for CPRE.

Laurie was appointed Chairman of English Heritage on 1 September 2013. Prior to this appointment he had been Deputy Chairman of the National Trust since 2005 and an elected member of the Trust’s Council since 2003.

Sir Laurie is Deputy Chairman (Europe) of Evercore Partners and holds a number of non-executive directorships within the finance sector.  He has over 35 years of experience in the corporate finance advisory business, including in South East Asia.

In the not for profit sector, Laurie is Deputy Chairman of The Windsor Leadership Trust, a Trustee of the Landmark Trust and a Trustee of the Allchurches Trust.  Laurie was a member of the UK Listing Authority Advisory Committee from 2001 until May 2011.

Michael Morrison is one of the Senior Principals in the Purcell partnership. He joined the practice as an assistant surveyor for Ely Cathedral and over the past thirty years he has been responsible for a wide range of major projects on behalf of the National Trust, the National Gallery, the British Museum and many public and private clients. For twelve years, from 1990 – 2002, he was the managing partner of Purcell and followed this with eight years as the Chairman. During this period he oversaw the major expansion of the practice from five regional offices to the present arrangement of a major office in London and sixteen regional studios.  His work has included Conservation Management Plans for a wide variety of buildings from the British Museum on the one hand to Scott’s Hut in Antarctica on the other.  He currently leads the team of twelve in-house Heritage Consultants.  Michael was a member of the National Trust’s Architectural Panel for ten years and a member of Heritage Lottery Fund’s expert panel on buildings and land for six years.  He is currently one of the Trustees of the Greenwich Foundation; he is a Governor of the Building Craft College in the London Borough of Newham and is an Associate Professor in the Architecture Faculty of Hong Kong University. He was appointed as one of the Commissioners for English Heritage in 2014 and is also the UK representative on the ICOMOS International Polar Heritage Committee.

Shahed Saleem is an architect, researcher and lecturer living and working in East London. His architectural practice specialises in housing, and places of worship, and he has been working with Muslim communities for over a decade exploring the possibilities of a new Muslim architecture in Britain. Through this work his practice engages with processes of making community and religious spaces, negotiating discourses of planning, community and visual cultures.

Saleem has authored a major monograph entitled, ‘The British Mosque, a social and architectural history’, due to be published by English Heritage in 2015, which is the first comprehensive account of Muslim architecture in Britain. He has also published a number of articles on different aspects of mosque history and culture. Since 2010 Saleem has been a member on English Heritage’s Places of Worship Forum, has served as a jury member for the ACE/RIBA Religious Building of the Year Award, has been nominated for the V&A Jameel Prize for Art and Architecture 2013 and acts as a consultant for the Muslim Council of Britain’s Research and Documentation Committee.

Saleem graduated from Kingston University, gained his professional accreditation at the Architectural Association and has obtained a Masters in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies. He teaches at the University of Westminster on the Masters programme in Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalisation, and regularly acts as a guest critic and lecturer in various institutions.