Our Executive Board

The Executive Board meets monthly.  It focuses on managing and delivering the corporate strategy, major policy issues, corporate projects and key risks, and it reviews issues for reporting to Commission. 

   Simon Thurley - Chief Executive  

Dr Simon Thurley is the Chief Executive of English Heritage; the Government’s principal advisor on the historic environment in England.

English Heritage is a £180m body, which exists to help people understand, value, care for and enjoy England’s heritage. It does this through its role in the listing and planning system, through grants, research, and by directly managing over 400 historic sites. 

Current campaigns include Inspired! to help places of Worship in need; the rescue of Apethorpe Hall, a very important seventeenth century country house in Northamptonshire; the archaeological excavation of the Roman amphitheatre at Chester and a major project to rebuild the Elizabethan garden at Kenilworth Castle.   

Simon Thurley believes that we need to change the way conservation is perceived and practised, and promotes what he calls ‘constructive conservation’ - a more balanced and explicable way to protect the best of our heritage for future generations. Current programmes of training, a new set of conservation principles and a Heritage Bill will provide a foundation for this to happen. 

Before April 2002 Dr Thurley was the director of the Museum of London, the world’s largest city museum where he was director for four and a half years. There a dynamic exhibition and gallery refurbishment programme and major archaeological discoveries increased visitor numbers to nearly 400,000 a year. 

In 1989 Simon Thurley was appointed Curator of Historic Royal Palaces. In the 8 years he held the post he was responsible for a number of major restoration projects, including the completion of the fire damage at Hampton Court, the restoration of the King’s Privy Garden there and the building of the new Jewel House for the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.

Dr Thurley is a leading architectural historian. His books include the best selling Royal Palaces of Tudor England published in 1993, Whitehall Palace and in 2003 Hampton Court a Social and Architectural History.  Dr Thurley is a regular broadcaster. As well as a number of documentaries for channel four and BBC 2 his television series include The Buildings That Made Britain for Channel 5 and Channel Four’s six part series Lost Buildings of Britain for which he also wrote an accompanying book. 

Dr Thurley is Honorary Fellow and Visiting Professor of London Medieval History at Royal Holloway College, London. He is an honorary member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Chairman of various historical and archaeological societies and serves on the Council of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  He is 45 and lives in a medieval merchant’s house in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, with his wife Anna.

Steven Bee - Director of Planning and Development

Steven Bee has been Director of Planning and Development at English Heritage since August 2003. His Group is responsible for guidance to government, developers and planning authorities on securing the long term future of places of historic importance, and maximising their contribution to communities’ social, cultural and economic objectives. This includes the Heritage Protection Team, which advises government on which places should be formally protected; the nine regional offices (organised in four territories) that provide guidance to local planning authorities and developers on appropriate changes to historic places, and the Estates Department, responsible for the maintenance, repair and development of English Heritage’s 409 properties.

Steven was educated at Bilborough Grammar School in Nottingham and has a degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry. He is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (1980).

From 1978-1987 he worked for London Borough of Lewisham on housing improvement areas, local plans, development control and economic development.

As a Director of planning and architecture consultants Llewelyn-Davies (1987-1998) he was responsible for community planning, transportation planning, tourism planning, environmental assessment, master planning, urban design and urban regeneration projects, and research into better planning practice.

From 1998-2003 he was Director of Development Services at Winchester City Council, responsible for planning, building control, engineering and estates.

Steven is married with two teenage children and lives in Winchester.

 

 

Keith Harrison - Director of Finance and Corporate Services

Keith Harrison joined English Heritage in January 2008 as Director of Finance and Corporate Services.  His responsibilities encompass Finance, Human Resources, IT and Procurement.  The main purpose of Keith's role is to provide strategic leadership for these functions and to ensure that high quality support services are delivered to the rest of the organisation and that statutory and compliance requirements are met.  Before joining English Heritage, Keith was Executive Director of Resources at Arts Council England
 
Earlier in his career, Keith worked in the civil service at both Department of the Environment and 10 Downing Street.  He then trained as a chartered accountant, working in private practice.  After qualification, he became Deputy Finance Director in an NHS trust before joining the Arts Council in 1999. 
 
Married with two children, Keith lives in Hampshire. 

Edward Impey - Director of Research and Standards

Edward Impey did an undergraduate degree in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford, followed by graduate studies in archaeology and a D.Phil. As a British Academy Post Doctoral research fellow, he worked on medieval architecture in England and Normandy (1992-5). He was appointed Assistant Curator, Historic Buildings with the Historic Royal Palaces Agency in 1995 and, from 1997 until 2002, he was Curator of the same institution. 

He has been Director of Research and Standards at English Heritage since November 2002. He is a member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists and has been a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries since 1997.

                               Deborah Lamb - Director of Policy and Communications

As Director of Policy and Communications, Deborah Lamb is concerned with English Heritage’s reputation and influence.  This includes influencing government policies which impact on England’s  historic environment. She is also responsible for corporate planning, legal advice,  communications and external relationships across the historic environment sector.

Before joining English Heritage, Deborah was Deputy Director of the Government’s Women and Equality Unit. Prior to that Deborah worked in the Department of the Environment

Mark Pemberton - Director of Properties and Outreach

Mark Pemberton joined English Heritage in January 2001 as Business Director. When Simon Thurley joined the organisation in 2002 he changed the role, expanding it to include responsibility for the running of English Heritage’s 409 properties opened to the public as visitor attractions. A new job title – Director of Properties and Outreach – reflected the wider responsibility which now included the development of a new visitor centre at Stonehenge and the overall promotion of the historic environment through education and outreach, fundraising and sponsorship, commercial publishing and the website.

Formerly he was Assistant Director and Head of Public Affairs at the Science Museum (the National Museum of Science and Industry) where, from 1987 until December 2000, he had responsibility for all marketing, communications and income generation activity at the three museums – the Science Museum, London, The National Railway Museum, York and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford. Prior to this Mark was Deputy Director at the Iron bridge Gorge Museum Trust with responsibility for the operational management of the museum and its wholly owned trading subsidiary.

Mark is also a Fellow of the Museums Association, a Director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions and a Trustee of the Wedgwood Museum.