Council of the Cockburn Association
President – Sir Sandy Crombie FRSE
Sir Sandy Crombie became President of the Cockburn Association in October 2009.
After joining Standard Life as a trainee actuary, Sir Sandy was appointed Chief Executive of Standard Life Investments when it was launched in 1998 and appointed group chief executive in 2004. Sir Sandy retired from Standard Life in 2009 and is now an independent director at the Royal Bank of Scotland. He has recently been appointed as the first Chairman of Creative Scotland, the new Scottish government arts body. Sir Sandy is also Chairman of the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust and Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He received a knighthood for services to insurance in the 2009 New Year Honours.
Lesley Martin FRSA MRTPI MCMI
Lesley is an independent strategy and research professional, with consultancy, advisory, and voluntary roles.
Until 2016, she held senior posts in local government, most recently with the City of Edinburgh Council’s Economic Development Service. She has led and managed strategic development plans, economic strategies, research programmes and performance auditing. Her experience has ranged from corporate-level work in community planning and sustainability, to new economy thinking, covering such topics as responsible business, fair work, inclusive growth, and the wellbeing economy.
Lesley’s consultancy work has included research, training, and facilitation of community workshops. She is a regular volunteer, particularly serving as a Board member with various organisations including the RTPI, where she was a Corporate member of Scottish Executive from 2017-19. She has been a PAS volunteer for community development programmes, and at the organisational level, where she served as a Board member and more recently as a member of the PAS Policy Group. Lesley is a Fellow of the RSA, serving as an RSA Area Councillor and Council member 2018-20, where she facilitated the Scottish dimension of the RSA’s Commission on Inclusive Growth. She remains active in the RSA, representing them on the Scottish Alliance for People and Places, contributing to network development and the RSA’s mission to enhance the diversity of the organisation.
As a keen researcher, Lesley is engaged in writing up her part-time doctoral research, focusing on economic exclusion and the role of the citizen in city strategy work. She is co-founder and organiser of several university networks which aim to facilitate academic-practitioner links. She is also an examinations invigilator, mentor and visiting lecturer.
Lesley was co-opted onto Council in December 2022 and was formally elected at the May 2023 AGM.
Claire Mitchell KC
Claire studied law at the University of Glasgow and was called at the Scottish Bar in 2003, having been a solicitor in private practice since 1996.
She has a particular interest in criminal law and extradition. She has built up a strong Appeal Court practice, with an emphasis on constitutional, human rights and sentencing questions. She has attended the Privy Council and Supreme Court on a number of occasions in relation to cases of general public importance to the law of Scotland. At the 2013 Law Awards of Scotland, she received a “Special Recognition Award” for her contribution to legal thinking over the previous decade.
Claire is the founder of Witches of Scotland, a campaign for justice seeking a legal pardon, public apology and national monument for the thousands of people – mostly women – that were convicted of witchcraft and executed between 1563 and 1736 in Scotland. She joined the Council at the AGM in May 2021.
Claire is Vice-Chair of Council.
Dr Bill Moyes
Bill is the current Chair of the Gambling Commission, which regulates all forms of commercial gambling in Great Britain and the National Lottery, and of the General Dental Council, which is the professional regulator of dentists and dental care professionals in the UK. His previous non-executive directorships have included the Priory Hospital Group, the Legal Services Board, the Office of Fair Trading and the Council of the University of Surrey and chair of its audit committee; the Chairmanship of the Board of Governors of Heythrop College (a constituent college of the University of London); and being a trustee of the Catholic Trust of England and Wales.
His executive career included a range of Civil Service policy-making roles in Whitehall, including the Economic Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, and in various departments of the then Scottish Office; Head of Infrastructure Finance in the Bank of Scotland, Director-General of the British Retail Consortium; and Executive Chairman of The Independent Regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts (“Monitor”).
Bill was educated at Edinburgh University, where he completed a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry. He is a long-term member of the Cockburn Association, the Grange Association and the Astley Ainslie Community Trust and was elected to the Cockburn Council in May 2021.
Bill is Hon. Treasurer of the Association
Professor Richard Rodger
Richard is Professor of Economic and Social History at Edinburgh University. He has published widely on the economic, business and urban history of Britain since 1800. His book The Transformation of Edinburgh: Land, Property and Trust in the Nineteenth Century was awarded the Frank Watson Prize for works on Scottish history.
Ongoing research involves projects on the development of public health in Victorian Scotland, and a study of Edinburgh trusts as part of a comparative analysis of legal and institutional factors affecting the trajectory of urban development. This research strand began while undertaking MA and PhD degrees in Economics and Economic History at Edinburgh, and continued during appointments at Liverpool, Kansas and Leicester Universities, where Rodger was until recently Professor of Urban History and Director of the East Midlands Oral History Archive. As author and editor, Rodger has published 16 books, and over 100 articles and chapters; he was General Editor for a series of 40 books under the title of Historical Urban Studies, and was Editor of Urban History, published by Cambridge University Press, between 1987 and 2007.
Richard was an Appointed member of Council. He was elected to Council at the May 2023.
Peter Williamson
Peter was born in Edinburgh. A graduate from the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen he undertook an academic career between 1980-1991 working in the fields of politics, public policy, and health policy and management, latterly as Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Policy and Management in the Medical School at Aberdeen University. Since returning to the city in 2014, he has lived in the New Town.
In 1991 he was appointed Director of Strategy and Performance Management with Grampian Healthcare NHS Trust where he developed services with local authorities and third-sector organizations. He moved to NHS Tayside in 2000 as Director of Strategy where he led community planning and the provision of health and well-being services. He also chaired and organised the national NHS Directors of Planning group from 2012 to 2014 which had a liaison role between NHS Boards and the Scottish Government regarding national planning.
In 2011 he was seconded to the Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Directorates to act as lead for health innovation across the government in support of ministers, initiating the first Government strategy in this area.
Since retiring in 2017, he became involved in the local community, setting up and chairing the Picardy Place Residents’ Association. In October 2019 he became a member of the New Town & Broughton Community Council and subsequently became the convenor of its Environment.
In his spare time, Peter is an author. As a local resident he is fully committed to working with others to protect, preserve and promote all that is valuable and unique in the landscape and heritage of the city and in particular to address the deterioration in the streetscape and fabric of public spaces in the City Centre and the hollowing out of communities.
Emily Yates
Emily is an award winning self-employed chartered landscape architect (CMLI) with 30+ years’ experience across all aspects of landscape architecture. She has been design team leader, project manager and lead consultant for projects including Regeneration, Housing, Streetscape, Public Realm, Parks, Historic landscapes, Planting design, Sustainable Urban Drainage systems, Rain gardens, Land Restoration, Play Areas, Schools, Hospitals, Retail and Commercial, Transport, Renewables and Visual and Landscape Character Impact Assessment.
Her experience includes all stages of planning, design and site supervision from feasibility and concept design, master planning and detail design through to implementation and long-term management and maintenance. She has acted has a Landscape Expert Witness for wind farm, housing, Greenbelt and mineral extraction developments.
Emily’s work has been concentrated in Scotland but she has also worked on projects as far afield as St Petersburg, New Zealand, Bucharest, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Page 2 of 3 She is an active member of the Landscape Institute and regularly represents the Landscape Institute on the Edinburgh Urban Design Panel.
Annick Gaillard
Annick Gaillard is a Computer Scientist with nearly 30 years of experience. She’s designed and built multiple systems for various major companies around the world. More recently she has worked in Finance and Investments, but her other sector experience includes Telecommunications, Energy and Manufacturing.
Annick has lived, studied and worked in many parts of the world, in cities of diverse sizes and invariably rich in heritage history. She moved to her current city centre address on the edge of Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site in 2007, and her ties with the mixed-use area that she has been living in have only grown stronger over the years.
She has been active in local matters and developed an expertise in Planning and Building Standards, Civic Licensing and Environmental Heath, and more recently Alcohol Licensing. She joined the New Town & Broughton Community Council in June 2021 and started convening its Licensing Committee in February 2022.
She also joined the Edinburgh Licensing Forum in September 2022, where she acts as vice-convenor. She’s made a number of presentations to the City of Edinburgh’s Development Management Sub-Committee, the Scottish Reporters (when responding in writing to Planning appeals), and Edinburgh Licensing Board.
Personal drive and ability to navigate quickly through complex information and processes, and positively influence stakeholders at all levels and from all backgrounds, are her key trademarks.
Annick was elected to Council at the May 2023 AGM
Interim Chair of Council – Richard Price
Richard Price moved to Edinburgh in 2000 and lived in various areas within the New Town since then.
He is an engineer by profession, having studied at Chemical Engineering at Imperial College in the 1970’s, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hons). After graduating , he joined ExxonMobil, the world’s largest public oil company, in a career that spanned almost 35 years working in the petrochemical industry in various roles within the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States. His professional training has provided useful expertise in understanding complex technical information and the ability to assimilate substantial amounts of factual data. Moreover, during the latter stages of his career, he moved into a business role that involved collaborating with many private companies and public institutions towards a common purpose.
Following retirement in 2013, he became a community councillor for the New Town & Broughton Community Council, initially taking on the planning brief, following the stepping down of a previous long-serving planning convenor. His living experience in Brussels had stimulated an interest in architecture and the Planning convenor role within the community council allowed this interest to be extended, albeit with more of a focus on Georgian architecture. He was elected to the role of Vice Chair for the community council in 2016, whilst retaining the Planning Committee convenorship.
He has been actively involved with the many significant planning applications and pre-consultations over the past 10 years across the New Town and city centre. In addition, he was the community council representative in the coalition formed to oppose the ill-fated Royal High School (“RHS”) hotel proposals which were refused following a Scottish Reporter Inquiry.
He has submitted numerous representations for the community council on behalf of the local community on the many Edinburgh city centre developments over the last 10 years, successfully liaising with heritage bodies and also with many developers in pre-consultations and providing comprehensive representations on many applications reflecting the views of the wider community.
As a local resident he is fully committed to continue to work with others to protect, preserve and promote all that is valuable and unique in the landscape and heritage of Edinburgh.
Richard was elected to Council at the May 2023 AGM.
Richard was appointed Interim Chair of Council in October 2024.
Eric Dawson
Eric Dawson is a qualified architect (BArch Hons, Dip Arch) and qualified planner (MURP with Distinction) with over 30 years’ experience in public and private practice in the UK and abroad. He was appointed as a design adviser to City of Edinburgh planning authority where he worked on projects and policy development before moving to Architecture and Design Scotland where he managed the Design Review and Sustainable Placemaking programmes.
He was part of the team that developed the Place Standard and was seconded to Planning Aid Scotland (PAS) to assist their charrette / workshop activity with local communities. Eric joined the Scottish Government’s Planning and Architecture Division to help take forward the planning reform agenda and was a core member of the team that produced the National Planning Framework (NPF4).
Eric was coopted onto Council in August 2024.
Harry Nimmo
Harry Nimmo has a career in the investment industry both in the UK and internationally. He was the manager of the abrdn UK Smaller Companies Growth Trust plc for 21 years and has a strong familiarity with the workings and structures of plc boards. Harry spent the early years of his career as a Land Surveyor working both in the UK and Saudi Arabia mainly on infrastructure projects and oil in & gas construction. He studied geography and graduated with an MBA from the University of Edinburgh before joining Standard Life. Also, Harry was appointed Honorary Consul of Finland in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in 2013.
Harry was coopted onto Council in June 2024.
