Countess Howe President of BMKALC 

 Mel Woof, CEO, BMKALC 

Matthew Barber 

The PCC’s role is to hold the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police to account for the performance of the Force, effectively making the police answerable to the communities they serve. The PCCs also has a wider role in promoting community safety and working with criminal justice partners to improve support for victims of crime.

Matthew is joint lead for Serious Violence at the Association of Police & Crime Commissioners and is also a Director of Blue Light Commercial and the National Business Crime Solution.

Matthew was raised and schooled in Oxfordshire before graduating from Brunel University. He still lives in Oxfordshire, is married to Katie and has two children, Emily and Lucy; and a labrador!

Matthew is Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley, covering Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes and Oxfordshire. Elected to the role in May 2021 with a majority of nearly 80,000. He served as Deputy PCC from 2017 to 2021, during which time he took on the chairmanship of the Local Criminal Justice Board.

Matthew also served as a councillor in the Vale of White Horse for nearly nineteen years. First elected to the Council in 2003 he served as Leader from 2011 to 2018 before standing down in March 2022. He has been a director of the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership as well as founding Chairman of Vale4Business and a Board Member of Science Vale and is involved in various charitable organisations.

This talk will set out how local communities can find out more about their local heritage and archaeology and understand the evolution of their settlements.  We will look at the importance of Conservation Areas and Local Heritage Listing, and how they add value to a place.  We will also discuss heritage-led regeneration and look at examples of where this has worked.

Speakers:

Eliza Alqassar – Historic, Built and Natural Environment Manager, Buckinghamshire Council

Bio: Eliza Alqassar studied archaeology at the University of Exeter and completed a Masters in Field Archaeology at the University of York. She worked for York Archaeological Trust as a digger and Community Archaeologist before lecturing in Archaeology at the University of Winchester.

From there she joined the Historic Environment Team at Cambridgeshire County Council before becoming the Archaeology Officer at Buckinghamshire County Council. Eliza also spent two years as an Assistant Inspector of Ancient Monuments with Historic England SE team, which she did alongside her role in Buckinghamshire.  Eliza now manages the heritage, archaeology, ecology, arboriculture and Environmental Record Centre teams at Buckinghamshire Council. 

Lucy Lawrence – Archaeology Officer, Buckinghamshire Council

Bio: Lucy Lawrence (nee Norman) studied archaeology and classical civilisation at the University of Nottingham. After graduating in 2000 and two years living abroad, she started work for Wessex Archaeology at the Heathrow Terminal 5 excavations.  Following this she transferred to Oxford Archaeology where she spent 12 years, initially working in the field, before moving into their in-house consultancy team. In 2015 she joined Cotswold Archaeology as part of the Milton Keynes consultancy department. Lucy joined Buckinghamshire County Archaeology Service in 2018.

Will Rysdale B.A. (Hons) CIHCM – Head of Housing Delivery and Regeneration

Will is a qualified housing professional with over 20 years’ experience working for local authorities. He is currently responsible for leading on MKCC’s delivery of new council homes and regeneration aspirations including the regeneration of the Lakes Estate. In previous roles Will was an Assistant Director for a large district council, having responsible for a wide range of services including homelessness and allocations, strategic planning, community safety and waste and recycling.

Will Ryesdale 

Bio: Bianca Rossetti is Centre for Ageing Better’s Strategic Partnership Manager, based in Greater Manchester. Bianca is a member of the Centre’s Localities team,  which encourages and supports places to adopt approaches that focus on older people and ageing to improve population health, reduce inequality and benefit local economies. Having worked on programmes focused on older people for the past decade, Bianca is passionate about place-based, collaborative approaches to improving people’s experience of later life, and challenging myths around demographic ageing.

About Centre for Ageing Better: The Centre for Ageing Better is pioneering ways to make ageing better a reality for everyone. This includes challenging ageism and building an Age-friendly Movement, creating Age-friendly Employment and Age-friendly Homes. It is a charitable foundation funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and part of the government’s What Works Network. 

Matthew Harmsworth Bio:

Matthew is a multi-award winning, RTPI chartered Social Value and Town Planning consultant wide ranging local authority, developer and consultancy side experience with university degrees in Psychology, Audiology, and Town Planning. He is Arcadis’ Global Chair for Access and Neurodiversity, providing strategic oversight of this across the business. He is also a co-lead of the UK’s Neurodiversity in Planning Network. Matthew has an extensive range of experience across residential, employment, health, and infrastructure development projects.

Arcadis put quality of life at the heart of placemaking and regeneration; And, with the acquisition of IBI Group and CRTKL, is recognised as one of the largest and most successful built and natural environment design practices in the world. Placemaking at Arcadis takes shape through a broad multidisciplinary approach to creating thriving communities through holistic human-centric, sustainable, innovative, technology-led and nature-integrated design solutions led by world class specialist teams.

Dan will explore how effective communication and meaningful community engagement are vital tools for shaping vibrant, resilient places. During this 15 minute talk he will share practical insights on how to harness strategic messaging, storytelling, and two-way dialogue to build trust, foster local identity, and empower communities to play an active role in shaping the future of their area.

Dan Purchese , Director, Breakthrough Communications

Breakthrough Communications, who provide local councils with advice, support and guidance relating to council communications and community engagement, as well as for council data protection and Freedom of Information. Their experienced team is ready to help your council communicate effectively and compliantly with your community. 

Communications, community engagement and data protection services for parish and town councils

Breakthrough Communications’ community engagement services include creating communication and community engagement strategies, creating and managing neighbourhood plans and community surveys, and providing social media support and advice. They support councils with crisis communications situations. Breakthrough Communications data protection services include carrying out council-wide data map audits, data protection impact assessments, and creating and refreshing data protection policies and procedures.

Council Hive service for parish and town councils

Council Hive is a subscription service that empowers parish and town councils to communicate effectively and compliantly with their communities. Council Hive takes the stress out of local council communications and compliance, saving clerks and council officers time, effort and money. Council Hive provides Clerks and council officers access to expert communication and compliance advice, templates, resource packs, and masterclasses – all in one place. Discover more at https://breakthroughcomms.co.uk/hive.

Mark Tomkins, website accessibility & .gov.uk expert | Aubergine

In today’s connected world, “place” is no longer just physical — it’s also digital. This session explores how town and parish councils can lead in shaping both. From websites as digital town or village halls to the debut of Helen AI, a virtual assistant designed to support council clerks, attendees will see how embracing digital tools can enhance accessibility, transparency, and community engagement. Discover how modern councils can turn their websites into 24/7 community hubs — and how AI is making local governance smarter, not harder and help shape YOUR place.

💡 Key Takeaways:

• Why accessible, well-designed websites are essential digital places
• How councils can use AI to save time and serve residents better
• A vision for digital place shaping that complements physical community building

Aubergine are one of the UK’s leading experts in providing fully compliant websites meeting both WCAG2.1AA (and WCAG2.2AA from October when the requirements change) alongside being authorised to register and manage.gov.uk domains.

We’re the official partner of SLCC for compliant websites and authors of the NALC Website Accessibility & Publishing Guidebook and are helping many parishes and towns migrate their websites over to a new, modern platform that’s easy to use, mobile friendly and fully compliant with Transparency Code and Accessibility requirements.

Full list of panellists to be published soon!

Cllr Jon Harvey, Town Councillor and former Mayor of Buckingham, will tell the story of how he came to write his family book “The Mayor’s Bear” and read a short extract. He will also outline how he is using the book to help get young people interested in community politics and one day becoming a local councillor. Jon will be selling and signing copies of the book at the conference in support of the new Buckingham Mayor’s Charities. More information (and how to order the book, if you wish) can be found here: https://themayorsbear.blogspot.com

Cllr Jon Harvey has been a Buckingham Town Councillor since 2011. In that time, he has chaired several committees and, like his colleagues on the council and in the Clerk’s team, he works hard to make Buckingham a welcoming and wonderful place for all to live, work, play, visit and study in. He was Town Mayor from 2017 to 2019. Professionally he has over 35 years’ experience in organisational change and transformation – advising, facilitating, coaching and opening space for creativity and innovation. In his personal life, Jon is a parent, grandfather, carer, campervanner and poet – currently walking The Great Ouse from its source to The Wash. Binding all this together is his ardent commitment to shaping a kinder, fairer and more sustainable world in which everyone gets to have the wherewithal to fulfil their dreams and ambitions.

Every local council wants the best outcomes for their community, but knowing what that might look like and how to deliver them, can be a challenging task. ONH’s Brendan Talk O’Neill discusses how their approach to an understanding of place can provide a starting point for identifying and delivering opportunities for positive change.

Profile: Brendan is an architect with over thirty years’ experience in the industry.

Before founding ONH he held senior positions in several high profile architectural practices and was responsible for a range of award winning projects across the cultural, residential and commercial sectors.

An early advocate of low energy and environmentally sensitive design he helped develop a new model for the design of office buildings before moving into the residential sector and the masterplanning of settlements.

His experience provides a depth of understanding of the commercial realities of the development world which is important in supporting ONH in its work with Town and Parish Councils helping them figure out how to respond to the opportunities and challenges of planning for change.

ONH: Planning for Good is a small social enterprise working across most of England. The team consists of planners, architects and urban designers. ONH’s team has a strong bond with its social mission: to enable community supported, high-quality and sustainable development, engaging successfully with local communities along the way.

Workshops 1, 2 and 3  

• There will be three workshops running during the afternoon session. Each of these are for limited numbers of participants.
• All workshops are running simultaneously you must book onto your preferred workshop in advance of the conference using the links at the top of this page (right hand side). 
• Bookings for the FREE workshops are only available to attendees of the conference with a valid event ticket.

Workshop 1 – Finding The Spatial Character of Place – with Tom Sykes, Common Works Architecture

During this workshop we will  look at an example village /town and through maps and photos, participants will identify the elements that give it a unique character, and think about how these could guide future development, design guidance and neighbourhood plans.

This workshop is for people who want to get inside the process of understanding the way places evolve.  By picking up pens and talking through drawing we’ll work through three micro workshops:

• Building a brief for a place shaping vision
• Analysing a place through maps and photographs
• Using this to imagine the future

 Over the hour there will be a mix of tools & techniques, opportunities to make a mess & try things out, and a chance to understand the ways different stakeholders can come together around place shaping.

Led by: Tom Sykes, Director, Common Works Architecture & Mel Woof CEO BMKALC 

Workshop 2 – Partnership working between diverse stakeholders – with Will Rysdale MKCC and Delia Shephard Bletchley & Fenny Stratford Town Council 

If the number is 1.5 million homes, how can we also hold on to these as individual places where full lives happen?  Where communities grow?  That add to our culture?  The homes where our memories are made?

Through illustrations Tom will talk about different approaches to making new homes that put the social life of places first.  Moving between well tested and grounded examples to innovative and idealistic possibilities there will be ways of adding quality to every situation.