Land Trust appoints four new trustees to board

Green space management charity, the Land Trust announces the appointment of four new trustees to its Board.

Rachel Hatfield, Sarah Chare, Simon Rutman and Tom Wright CBE bring with them a wealth of talent and experience and will further strengthen an already multi-talented Board.

Rachel Hatfield

Rachel has broad experience leading transformational change in customer facing businesses. In her early career, she spent 20 years working as an international finance lawyer, including ten years growing European finance businesses as a Partner in several global law firms. For the last 15 years she has focused on non-executive roles, developing a broad knowledge of third sector governance, risk management, and funding. Rachel is a non-executive director at Thrive Homes UK (a registered provider of affordable and social housing) where she also currently chairs the Customer, Colleague and Governance Committee. She is also a Member (and former Trustee) of SSNAP (a charity supporting neonatal care at The John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford) and a former Trustee of The Danes Educational Trust, Hertfordshire. Rachel owns a planting design consultancy focussed on sustainable, biodiverse, spaces and she also volunteers as a heritage landscape consultant at The Chiltern Open Air Museum, Buckinghamshire.

Sarah Chare

Sarah has 28 years’ experience as an environmental operator, adviser and regulator. She is currently Chief Operating Officer for the Environment Agency. Sarah has significant experience at senior management level, and as a keen advocate of partnership working has helped deliver blue, green and grey infrastructure programmes, strategy development and transformation. She is passionate about protecting and improving the environment and is experienced in working with boards at the Environment Agency, as well as strategic level placemaking.

Simon Rutman

Simon has recently retired from the position of Partner at Travers Smith LLP. He has over 20 years’ experience as a real estate partner and five years running the real estate department. Simon has worked on an extensive and diverse set of transactions. Highlights include advising Patron Capital on both the sale of Punch Taverns and its interest in CALA Homes, advising McCarthy & Stone on numerous strategic property transactions over many years and advising on the development of Imperial College’s White City Campus. The most recent edition of Chambers Legal directory describes him as “one of the most skilful legal negotiators in the real estate sector.

Tom Wright, CBE.

Tom has extensive experience within the charity sector in an executive and non-executive capacity. He works across the heritage and tourism sectors, currently as a Trustee of Leeds Castle, and of the National Museums of the Royal Navy, and within the healthcare sector as a Trustees of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine. He was previously the Senior Independent Director at NICE, and Chief Executive of VisitBritain.

William Hiscocks, Chairman of the Land Trust said: “On behalf of all the trustees and staff, I am delighted to welcome Rachel, Sarah, Simon and Tom to the Trust and thank them most sincerely for joining us.

“Each of the four new members bring with them unique and highly valuable knowledge and expertise. I wish them an enjoyable and interesting time as trustees and thank them in advance for their contributions to our thinking and debates.”