In 2009 President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing paid homage to Jeremy’s leadership of a European-wide organisation, and the Governor and Mayor of Vienna Michael Häupl, said of him that “ Europe’s regions, cities and municipalities have a great deal to thank you for.”
Jeremy brings to Ai his extensive cross-cultural experience in leading European and international associations of cities and local authorities, and in managing and developing urban and metropolitan governments.
A barrister by profession, he has held top-level positions in the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), the London Borough of Camden and the Greater London Council/Inner London Education Authority.
He has always worked at the interface of the political, managerial and legal spheres. He has worked successfully with and for political leaders as diverse as Ken Livingstone, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and most recently Michael Häupl, Mayor of Vienna.
He is diplomatically skilled in bringing people together across political and cultural boundaries, and in finding common ground and solutions. He also contributes a depth of legal, financial and people management experience.
He has excellent French, and has often delivered speeches and chaired meetings in French.
Jeremy’s work for Europe’s local and regional government has been recognized in a number of awards – from the Association of Polish Cities, the Association of Ukrainian Cities, the City of Innsbruck, the Network of Associations of Local Authorities in South-East Europe (NALAS), and from the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities.
Jeremy works with Ai’s clients in the following areas
• Strategic analysis and policy/priority-setting for public and public interest organisations
• Mediating, moderating, chairing meetings, delivering consensus outcomes
• Drafting – policy papers and briefs, resolutions, speeches, articles…
• Public speaking and advocacy
• Urban/regional policy, governance, regeneration
• Legal / policy frameworks for public services
• Local authorities in international development
• European policies and affairs, especially their impact on sub-national authorities and citizens
Until the end of 2009, Jeremy was for 8 years Secretary General of CEMR, the pan-European association of national local and regional government associations, based in Brussels and Paris with members in 38 countries. The work included EU lobbying for local government, exchanges of experience, drafting standard-setting documents like the Code of Good Practice in Consultation and the European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life. He has great experience in public speaking and advocacy, before the European Parliament, at major conferences etc.
His 5 years as Secretary General of IULA added a worldwide dimension to Jeremy’s experience, working with UN/international agencies and with national development ministries. He was a member of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers. He played a key role in forming the new unified world organisation United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).
Jeremy has substantial hands-on city management experience. From 1989 to end 1995 he was Chief Executive of the London Borough of Camden – one of London’s most diverse and challenging boroughs. In this period, Camden underwent huge organisational change – setting up a new education service, reducing budgets to meet government-fixed ceilings, winning new resources for major urban regeneration programmes, restructuring and improving services. From being one of the poorer-performing English councils in 1989, Camden emerged as one of the top-performing ones.
During these years, he was also Clerk to the North London Waste Authority, responsible for the disposal of household and commercial waste for 7 London boroughs; the work included setting up a new public private joint venture (PPP), with responsibility for a long-term waste disposal contract worth c. £150 million.
Jeremy’s local and regional government career began in 1983 when he joined the Greater London Council as Senior Legal Adviser. In particular, he worked directly with the GLC’s political leadership on legal strategies and tactics, in particular to maintain the GLC’s campaign against abolition. From 1986 to 1989 he was Clerk and Legal Adviser to the Inner London Education Authority.
Jeremy was educated at Framlingham College, Suffolk, and Peterhouse, Cambridge University, where he obtained his degree in law. He qualified as a barrister (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1969, and was in private practice in barristers’ chambers in London from 1971 to 1978, working mainly on employment, housing, crime and public administrative law. He was also involved in international human rights issues, e.g. as observer at politically-charged overseas trials.
In 1978 he joined the Brent Community Law Centre as Senior Legal Adviser – a publicly-funded innovative community legal resource in one of London’s most diverse and deprived areas.
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