The biographies of GONW's Directors can be found below:
Liz Meek – Regional Director
Liz Meek has been Regional Director for Government Office North West (GONW)
since early 2008.
Liz’s career has been centred on urban policy and regeneration and
she has a particular interest in constitutional change and devolution.
Liz’s role in the North West involves delivering policies and
programmes for 12 Whitehall departments and she has been particularly
involved with social exclusion, tackling worklessness and the development
of multi-agency delivery arrangements for this group. She has also
championed equalities, for example by establishing the Black and Minority
Ethnic Advisory Group which works with GONW and the North West Development
Agency on specific delivery issues such as worklessness, hate crime and
health.
Influencing Whitehall departments is a vital part of Liz’s role so
that policies and programmes are tailored to the needs of the region. Liz
advises Ministers and senior officials in Whitehall regularly on behalf of
the region.
Previously, Liz led the team which developed the policy and legislation to
set up the London Mayor and Assembly and retains a strong interest in
governance issues.
Before this, Liz was based in Nigeria with the Foreign Office, after
working as a Private Secretary to four successive Ministers. In the early
1990s she established the government unit responsible for input to the
Manchester Olympic Bid and was later heavily involved in preparations for
the London 2012 Olympic Bid. More recently Liz had been Regional Director
at GOL from 2001 till her appointment at GONW.
Dominic Brankin – Deputy to the Regional
Director/Director, Corporate Resources & Europe
Dominic joined the Government Office in April 2009, having previously been
Customer Services Director for Jobcentre Plus in the North West (and,
before that, in the North East). His career has been predominantly in
the areas of employment and welfare reform and he has held a wide variety
of posts in operational, policy and corporate services delivery.
As well as being deputy to Liz Meek, Dominic is also responsible for:
The Regional Resilience Team (RRT)
RRTs act as the key interface between central government and local
responders on the full breadth of resilience issues covering malicious and
non-malicious threats; including, for example, flu pandemic and
flooding. The North West RRT is led by Julie Grugel.
The Local Government Information & Analysis Team
The team is responsible for the office’s analytical capability, and
for co-ordinating the activity of our Locality Managers who lead on
GONW’s day to day relationships with local authorities. The
team is led by Mike Chambers.
The Resources & Planning Team
The team’s work is a mixture of day to day delivery of services -
such as finance, HR, communications, information management and business
planning – and the development of GONW’s corporate capability,
to ensure it is able to deliver, and to transform itself, in line with its
vision. The team is led by Jon Wild.
The Regional Parliamentary & Private Office
The team undertakes work to support the Regional Director, Regional
Minister, Regional Select and Grand Committees and leads on all ministerial
and senior official briefing, visits in the region. The team is led
by David Young.
The European Programmes Team
The team is responsible for the successful closure of the 2000-2006
European Objective 1, Objective 2 and Urban programmes in the North
West. Its key priority is working with partner organisations to
safeguard the £1.5bn of investments made through the Programmes by
reducing the instances of recovery due to non-compliance with European
Regulations. The team is led by Mike Henesey and Dave Rance.
David Higham – Deputy Regional Director - Ecomomic,
Environmental and Regional Issues
David is currently Deputy Regional Director, Economic, Environmental and
Regional Issues at Government Office for the North West.
David’s role is to bring together the economic and environmental
agendas in the region in order to deliver a prosperous, socially inclusive
and sustainable society. David is also the lead DRD for Cumbria.
Born and brought up in Bolton, David followed many of his contemporaries
south and has degrees from Oxford and Essex universities. Trained as
a professional economist, he started his career as a university lecturer
before becoming Head of Economic Policy at the CBI and then joining DTI in
1985. During his time in the civil service, David has worked as an
economist in a variety of areas including trade, competition policy and
economic development. He returned to the North West in 1996 and since
then has worked in a variety of roles at the interface between the economy
and other agendas.
Married with one daughter, he is a keen cyclist (often boring people with
tales about when he raced against Chris Boardman) and a lifelong supporter
of Bolton Wanderers.
Jo Lappin – Deputy Regional Director - Housing, Transport and
Planning
Jo is Deputy Regional Director has responsibility for housing, planning and
transport. Jo is GONW's lead for the Liverpool City Region.
She has significant experience in delivering regeneration activity, and has
worked in Government Office for the North West for the past decade on a
wide range of policy and Programme areas including local government,
employment and skills, business and innovation, Sustainable Communities and
European Structural Funds. Prior to working in Government Office North
West, Jo worked in a wide range of Civil Service posts.
Jo is educated to post-graduate level. She was born in, and lives in the
North West region, and is married with three children.
Greg Burke – Deputy Regional Director -
Worklessness and Social Exclusion
Greg joined the Government Office as a secondee from DCSF in 2008 to work
on the children’s agenda and to be the Government Office lead for
Cheshire. Prior to this, Greg worked in a wide range of policy and
operational posts at both a regional and national level.
He was appointed as Deputy Regional Director for Worklessness and Social
Exclusion from 2009. As Deputy Regional Director in GONW, Greg leads on a
range of strategic priorities in the region, including Worklessness,
Regeneration, European Social Fund, Cohesion and Social Exclusion. He is
also the sub regional lead for Greater Manchester.
Deborah Brownlee – Deputy Regional Director -
Children and Learners
Deborah Borwnlee is currently Director for Children and Learners for
Government Office North West. Prior to this Deborah worked in a range of
roles with Children and Young People for over 25 years. Originally from
Salford in Greater Manchester, she trained after university as a Careers
Adviser and worked in careers guidance roles in Nottingham, Cheshire and
the Wirral before undertaking a range of management roles within both the
public and private sector. Her previous roles have included Chief Executive
of Wigan Careers Service and of Positive Futures Ltd, (a provider of a
range of youth support services including Connexions, Youth Service,
Education Welfare and EBP). She became Assistant Director of Childrens
Services in Wigan in 2006 and was promoted to Deputy Director in 2007
before moving to her current role in GONW in December 2008.
