Mark Patchett

Mark has over thirty-five years professional experience working on community engagement, development and empowerment in a wide range of cities, towns and villages across the UK, and specialises in setting up locally managed stewardship Trusts.

He is known for “making things happen”, either through strategic planning and business planning with a range of partners and stakeholders, or through organisational change within voluntary or community organisations.

Mark is the Director of his own successful consultancy business. Over the past thirty years, he has led on a wide range of assignments for over 180 clients from across the public, private, and charitable sectors, including land owners, developers, house-builders, major public authorities, housing associations, dioceses and regeneration partnerships, as well as both large and very small community and voluntary organisations. Many of these assignments require business planning and then setting up a new charitable Trust to maintain public facilities and enable the building of a successful new community.

Mark been at the forefront of research and planning for alternative models of community management of community facilities and public open space over the past thirty-five years and already set up local stewardship structures in Ashford, Caterham, Chichester, Cholsey, Cirencester, Edgware, Greenford, Guildford, Leicester, Luton, Manor House, and most recently at Bishops Stortford, as well as advising on many others.

He has extensive experience of the planning, design, commissioning and running of community facilities in a wide range of rural, town and urban contexts. These range from a £7m multi-purpose community hub to a small village hall in a rural coalfield. All are viable and sustainable with different governance and management arrangements to suit the local circumstances.

Mark’s training and background is in the commercial sector. With a degree in Management Sciences from Manchester, he spent six years in sales and marketing, including a period as Sales Manager for a fair trade organisation in Newcastle. Whilst there, he developed an interest in community economic development. Mark was then appointed Chief Executive of a Community Development Trust in East Manchester, which won national awards and brought him recognition as a community based “Social Entrepreneur”.