I retired from the Peak District National Park Authority in 2008. I am active in retirement as Secretary of the Matlock Civic Association.

My Fellowship was for community-based countryside conservation. I visited protected landscapes in Austria and France in 1995 to learn about local involvement in the conservation of nationally significant landscapes. I discovered that a main role of the conservation agencies was to work with local businesses to encourage them to become actively involved in the conservation effort Valorisation du Patrimoine.

Back in the Peak District I persuaded the National Park Authority to give me a new role applying the lessons from my Fellowship to new programmes of work. I succeeded in securing funding from EU and national government agencies for a series of new initiatives, including the 'New Environmental Economy'. This £4 million programme involved 1,000 businesses creating new products and services, making creative use of the environmental assets of the area. This created direct and indirect economic benefits and a new commitment to the environmental assets of the area, because they had become business assets too.