Melbourne Barrett BSc (Hons) MBA MRICS Mel is Chief Executive of Nottingham City Council, serving one of the country’s most vibrant and diverse cities. The council has a gross budget of £1.2 billion per annum and delivers against over 2,000 statutory duties. He is responsible for providing policy advice to elected councillors and providing visible leadership to the council’s 7,000 staff delivering vital public services, securing economic growth and improving life chances. He was previously Chief Executive of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, Executive Director of Housing and Regeneration at the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, Oxford City Council’s Executive Director for City Regeneration and a Director of the London Development Agency. He has a successful track record in the management of large-scale customer facing services, organisational change and transformation initiatives, and the delivery of large-scale regeneration and development projects. In west London he led the work that saw Old Oak Common chosen as the interchange station for HS2 and Crossrail predicated on its capacity to deliver 50,000 new homes and 80,000 jobs; and concluded a £1.2bn Joint Venture with Urban and Civic and the Wellcome Trust for the 3,500 home first phase of Manydown, a new Garden Community on the western edge of Basingstoke that will ultimately comprise 10,000 homes. As a Director of the London Development Agency, on behalf of the Mayor of London, Mel established and was founding Chairman of SME Wholesale Finance (London) Ltd., now trading as Funding London, which works with investors, banks and the higher education sector to provide venture capital and loan finance to growing businesses, recycling the returns made into other London businesses, a scheme which was highly commended by the EU at the time. Mel was born in Coventry to Windrush generation parents. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Land Management, an MBA from City University, London and is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Mel was a Commissioner on the recently concluded Commission for Creating Healthy Cities.