NatWest director takes top LEP job
The Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership has appointed a new chair and three new Board members.
Pat Doody – currently director of business and commercial banking at NatWest in Lincoln – has been a director on the LEP’s Board since 2015. He will serve as chair for a term of three years.
He has also served as interim chair of the LEP Board since the previous incumbent Ursula Lidbetter OBE stepped down in December 2019.
Doody has been with NatWest for 42 years and has been based in Lincolnshire since 1990.
He first joined the LEP as chair of the European Structural Investment Fund (ESIF) Committee and has also served on its Investment Board and the Employment and Skills Board.
Yvonne Adam, managing Director (frozen) at Young’s Seafood, Alison Ballard, director of UK Typhoon Support at BAE Systems and Air Commodore Suraya Marshall, who is based at RAF College Cranwell, have joined Doody on the Board.
He said: “It is with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I follow Ursula Lidbetter in chairing the Greater Lincolnshire LEP.
“I feel pride too. Greater Lincolnshire is a place both I and the Board have a great deal of faith in and ambition for, and I’m delighted to represent an area of the country that I am proud to call home after 30 years of working with SMEs and the public sector.
“The LEP has achieved much under Ursula’s leadership and great opportunities remain to grow our contribution as the Government seeks to level up UK growth and prosperity.
“We invite further investment with a strong pipeline of projects which we believe will meet the strategic objectives of both Greater Lincolnshire and national Government. The Board, backed by a very capable CEO and team and in close collaboration with our local government partners and MPs, continues to explore and develop plans to maximise these economic and social opportunities.”
Ruth Carver, chief executive of the Greater Lincolnshire LEP, added: “Pat was the strongest candidate and I’m confident that he will prove to be an outstanding chair.
“He offers a wealth of knowledge of both the public and the private sector, he’s a safe pair of hands and he brings continuity after his five years on the Board.
“His experience, sensitivity, passion and dedication to improving opportunities across Greater Lincolnshire and growing the local economy make him the ideal Chair to take the LEP forward into a new decade.”
Doody is also an advisory board member at the University of Lincoln’s International Business School, a former vice chair of the Lincoln College Group, where he was a governor for nine years, and a former chair of the steering group for Lincoln’s biannual digital arts festival Frequency.
