The first week in November 2025 brought National Trustee Week, a week to celebrate the achievements of Trustees across the UK and thank them for their contributions, time, and efforts to help charities thrive. Here at Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust (MGET), we are lucky to have a very supportive board of Trustees, who help to guide the work we do and the direction that MGET takes as a charity. We are thrilled to share a bit more about our board of Trustees and what has led them to working with us at MGET…
A Trustee since the origin of MGET, and currently chair of the board of Trustees, is Liz Newton. Liz has had a long and varied career in the environmental sector, including being a founding Director of Natural England. Liz has an incredible abundance of experience of the environmental sector to share, which we at MGET are very lucky to receive. Liz shares that she ‘was honoured to be asked to be one of the original trustees [of MGET] 15 years ago and I am delighted to be chairing the Board at the moment. The Mersey is a wonderful but not well understood river and I have enjoyed helping the team and the other trustees to improve and share all that is special about the river and the surrounding area. The enthusiasm and knowledge of the other trustees is inspiring.’
Another long-serving member of the MGET board of Trustees is Professor David Norman. David is a local resident in Halton and brings a wealth of valuable knowledge of the Northwest area to MGET, gained from many roles including Director of Daresbury Laboratory, Honorary vice president of Cheshire Wildlife Trust, President of Cheshire and Wirral Ornithological Society, and author of Birds in Cheshire. David shares that he ‘had been interested in the Mersey since becoming the founder-chairman of the Mersey Estuary Conservation Group in the 1980s, so jumped at the chance to contribute again through the MGET and speak up for the importance of the Mersey.’
Although Liz and David have been with us at MGET for a long time and offer a long-term view of our work, we have always looked for new individuals to join the board that can offer different expertise and experiences. Some of our Trustees have joined us more recently.
David Inman joined the Board of Trustees in 2019. David brings extensive experience of environmental surveying and consultancy to the MGET board, with over 20 years’ experience advising on environmental, energy, and quality management to the private and public sectors. David shares that ‘In my time as a trustee, I’ve found working alongside professionals from a wide range of specialisms and backgrounds both enjoyable and enriching.’
Sue Bentley also joined the Board of Trustees in 2019. Sue worked as a professional web developer, managing her own company for over twenty-one years. She is also involved with several charities and is a Climate Change Ambassador for the Cheshire Federation of Women’s Institutes, receiving an MBE for her contributions to charity work. Sue brings lots of experience and expertise of Charity work and community engagement to MGET. Sue shares that ‘when I see innovative ideas to monitor and protect our river being actioned, and when I see videos of fat, healthy otters swimming in a river that was once completely dead, I am immensely proud to support the essential work done by the three members of the MGET team.’
We at MGET are thrilled to have people with such a variety of backgrounds on the board of Trustees. Each person brings unique opinions and perspectives to consider but are always working together to reach collaborative decisions. Below, we introduce a few more trustees with an incredible wealth of experience to offer.
Euan Hall also sits on the MGET board of Trustees, he is a Chartered Surveyor with over 40 years’ experience in urban regeneration. Euan has held several roles including Director of the National coalfields programme, establishing the Land Trust in 2004, and a trustee role at CL:AIRE – Contaminated Land: Applications in Real Environments. Euan’s expertise in in nature regeneration is very valuable to us at MGET.
Also on the board of Trustees is Andrew Darron. Andrew has a background in engineering has been the Executive Director at Groundwork since 2010. Andrew has a specific interest in the role of the environment in improving wellbeing and tackling barriers to employment. With his extensive experience in leading a charitable trust, we are very appreciative of Andrew’s guidance on the board of Trustees. Andrew was drawn to being on MGET’s board of trustees as he felt he had ‘a lot of relevant 3rd sector management experience to offer – but also a lot to gain from MGETs research focus on nature recovery’.
At MGET, we work with many stakeholders to deliver our work around the upper Mersey estuary. We therefore felt it was important to have representation on our board from nearby Local Authorities, to maintain contact and share our work.
Ian Brackenbury has recently joined our Board of Trustees as our representative from Warrington Borough Council. As Commercial Services Manager for Warrington Borough Council, Ian is able to keep the Board informed of activities in Warrington and provides an important link between us at MGET and the council. We welcome Ian and look forward to working with him further.
Our recently nominated representative from Halton Borough Council is Cllr Paul Nolan, who we also look forward to working with.
David Boyer originally joined our board of Trustees as a representative of Warrington Borough Council but has recently retired from that role. We are lucky that David enjoyed his role as Trustee so much that he decided to continue as a Trustee. David has lived in Merseyside all his life and earlier in his career, was part of a cross Merseyside Local Authority team helping to deliver a project that played a major part in transforming the formerly highly polluted estuary into a cleaner environment. David has worked for several Local Authorities adjacent to Halton throughout his career and has always supported the work of the Mersey Gateway Project. David shares that he is ‘so pleased to be able to continue to help with the trusts vision and aims of promoting the conservation, protection and improvement of the environment in the Upper Mersey Estuary.’
We at MGET are grateful to our trustees for their contributions, advice and guidance in our work, and look forward to working with them for many years to come. Read more about each of our trustee’s here: Meet the Team – Directors – Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust