CIEH Air Quality Conference

George O'Ferrall, Senior Policy and Programme Officer, Air Quality Team, Greater London Authority.  George leads on the planning and indoor air quality portfolio areas of the Mayor’s air quality programme. This includes ensuring the Mayor’s air quality planning policies such as Air Quality Neutral and Air Quality Positive are implemented robustly, and feeding into the new London Plan update. For indoor air quality, he leads on the Mayor’s School Filters Programme which aims to install indoor air quality filters into 200 primary schools across London. Prior to joining the GLA George worked as Air Quality Projects Lead at Southampton City Council.

Paul Agnew, Science Manager, Met Office. Paul manages the Air Quality Modelling team at the Met Office. The team are responsible for developing and maintaining the model used to generate the daily air quality forecast and undertake research in a wide range of topics relating to air quality. Before working on air quality Paul worked in the field of aviation meteorology and this was itself preceded by a career with the UK Atomic Energy Authority as a research scientist in the field of radiation-matter interactions.

Sarah Legge, Associate Director, Arup. Sarah is an air pollution specialist with 27 years’ experience, ranging from strategic policy to technical air quality work, with a particular interest in the intersection of air pollution and climate change.  Sarah is an Associate Director at Arup, leading strategic work on air quality and linking with climate, transport and the built environment projects and issues. She has also run her own consultancy, been Head of Air Quality at the Greater London Authority, a member of the Healthy Air Coalition, and is Chartered Environmentalist.  Sarah is also Chair of the Task Group on Integrating Action on Air Quality & Climate Change Guidance at EPIC (the Environmental Policy Implementation Community, part of the Institution of Environmental Sciences).

Dr. Simon Griffiths is a Chartered Environmental Health Practitioner and translational science-based researcher in environmental health at the University of Northumbria. He specialises in building understanding of large open uncontrolled fires and their implications for exposed communities. His work reduces the likelihood and impact on communities and public health from these fires.

Somayya Yaqub, Head of Corporate Health and Safety, Ealing Council, London Borough of Ealing. Somayya serves as a Non-Executive Director at Broadway Living Limited. She is an expert safety manager with over 15 years' diverse experience of safety and environmental risk management including construction, facilities management, housing, offices and waste management. She also has numerous years' experience in a variety of local government roles with emphasis on environmental health, including air quality, pollution and nuisance mitigation. She has thorough experience of large-scale regeneration projects and design risk mitigation. She has given evidence at planning enquirires and court cases. She is also co-author of the Professional Planning Guidance document to supplement the National Planning Policy framework, a member of the Institute of Acoustics Environmental Noise Committee and a Member of the CIEH Environmental Protection panel.

Professor William Bloss, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of College for Life & Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham.  Professor Bloss completed his BA and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge, specialising in Natural Sciences (Chemistry), before working as a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and then at the University of Leeds. He joined the University of Birmingham in 2007. An atmospheric scientist by training, Bloss leads the WM-Air programme, which works with eternal partners to improve air quality strategy in support of improved health and economic development. Funded by NERC, WM-Air encompasses a portfolio of ca. 30 partner-led user-focussed projects. He runs the Birmingham Air Quality Supersite, one of three state-of-the-science monitoring stations nationally, has led over 20 externally funded research projects, including with international atmospheric science research projects in India, China, Antarctica, the USA and Europe.