President and Vice Presidents

President
Alan Higgins

Alan was elected President of the CIEH for a three-year period with effect from 1 January 2005. He was previously Chair of the CIEH’s Policy Development Board.

A Chartered Environmental Health Practitioner and an experienced senior manager of public protection services, most recently with Portsmouth City Council, Alan is now a consultant and interim manager in environmental health, housing and related issues.

Alan is a regular contributor to national and international conferences. He has served as a professional adviser both to the Local Government Association and the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra). Alan chairs the national Standing Conference on Contaminated Land and has played a key role in developing the contaminated land regime in the UK.

Alan has had considerable experience in developing and managing multi-agency partnerships, particularly with the health sector, voluntary agencies, and environmental groups and agencies. He has particular expertise working in inner city and urban authorities serving diverse populations, including areas of significant deprivation.

Vice Presidents

The CIEH appoints a number of Honorary Vice Presidents. These are notable individuals who, through their position and status, are of particular value and assistance in helping us achieve our objectives. Their duties include promoting the CIEH, supporting our initiatives, making introductions, identifying issues of concern for consideration and exchanging information. 

Our current Vice Presidents are:

Professor Graham Ashworth CBE

Professor Ashworth is President of the Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe, and a former member of the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development. He is a past President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.  Formerly he was Chairman of Going for Green and ENCAMS (Environmental Campaigns). As a former Professor (and still Research Professor) of Urban Environmental Studies at the University of Salford, he is an expert in urban regeneration.

Professor Sir Kenneth Calman KCB FRCS

Sir Kenneth has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Durham since October 1998, and represents Universities UK on the Education Committee of the General Medical Council. He was Chief Medical Officer at the Scottish Office Home and Health Department from 1989-91 and Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health from 1991-98.

Sir Kenneth is an advocate of the holistic role of the environmental health profession in promoting and improving public health.  As Chief Medical Officer he sought to engage and involve the profession in wider public health delivery, and he accepted the role of Vice President of the CIEH to continue that work.  He has served as Chairman of the Executive Board of the World Health Organisation and the European Environment and Health Committee. He is a Fellow of several academic and professional bodies. including the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Dr June Crown CBE

Dr Crown is a former President of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine.  Her career has focused on public health medicine as Area Health Officer in Brent and Harrow, Director of Public Health in Bloomsbury and Director of the South East Institute of Public Health.  She has frequently acted as a special adviser to the World Health Organisation and overseas governments. She is a Vice President of Age Concern England, a Trustee of Help the Aged, Deputy Chairman of the University of Brighton and President of Medact (a charitable organisation of doctors, nurses and other health professionals who are concerned about major threats to health such as conflict, poverty and environmental degradation).

Brian Hanna CBE FCIEH

Brian Hanna was elected President of the CIEH in January 2002 for a three-year term.  Now retired, Brian was previously Chief Executive and Town Clerk of Belfast City Council, where he was instrumental in developing and implementing urban regeneration programmes and building effective partnerships between the private and public sector. He is a member of several professional and government advisory organisations and a former member of the Sustainable Development Commission.

Brian chaired the President’s Commission to investigate how the environmental health profession can rise to the challenge of the changes that have taken place in local government over the last two decades. The resulting Hanna Report was published in April 2005 and sets out a broad range of policy implications for the CIEH.  In 2004 he was appointed as Chair of the British Council’s Northern Ireland Advisory Committee.

Alan Johnson FCIEH

Alan Johnson is a past President of the CIEH.  Now retired, Alan was an environmental health officer (EHO) with Bradford City Council.  During this time he was elected as a member of Council, and through his active participation in the organisation later became President.  He is an Honorary Vice President of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) and plays an active role in the continuing professional relationships between the two bodies.

Professor Tim Lang

Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University's Institute of Health Sciences in London. He specialises in how policy affects the shape of the food supply chain, what people eat and the social, health and civic outcomes. Over 30 years, he has worked in a variety of posts in education, research and public interest organisations. Since 1994, as Europe’s only Professor of Food Policy, he has concentrated on long-term strategic issues in food policy, linking human and environmental health.

He was elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in 2001 and won the BBC Radio 4 Derek Cooper Food Award in 2003 and the Caroline Walker Trust award in 2002. From 1999 to 2005 he was chair of Sustain, the UK alliance of 100+ NGOs promoting better food. He is the author / co-author of 120+ articles and reports and 10 books, including The Atlas of Food (with Erik Millstone, 2003) and Food Wars (with Michael Heasman, 2004).

Derek Osborn CBE

Derek Osborn served for 30 years in the Civil Service, including six years as Director General for Environmental Protection at the Department of the Environment until retirement in January 1996.  He represented the United Kingdom and was Chair of the Management Board of the European Environment Agency (1995-1999) and was on the Board of the Environment Agency for England and Wales (1996-98).  He is a Non-executive Director of Severn Trent PLC, Chair of Jupiter Global Green Investment Trust and is involved in several environmental organisations.

Joan Walley MP

Joan Walley has been Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North since 1987. Following a career in local government, she became opposition spokesperson on Environmental Protection and Development (1988-90) and Transport (1990-95), and has served on the Environmental Select Committee since 1997. Her special interests include the environment and health.