Trustees and Members

The trustees of Bellevue Place Education Trust sit on the BPET Board. The trustees are made up of four sponsor trustees – two appointed by Bellevue Education, two appointed by Place Group – two independent trustees, two parent trustees and one financial expert.

Declaration of Pecuniary and Personal Interests: BPET is required to publish a record of  its trustees’ business and personal interests annually, through the BPET Board Register of Interests.

Board of Trustees

Claire Delaney – Chair of Trustees and founding member

Claire has held a number of Board level positions, most recently as an owner and director of Place Group Ltd and as the Chair of the Bellevue Place Education Trust. As Managing Director of Place Group, Claire has led an organisation that has a 18-year history of supporting major education transformation programmes in the UK. Place has helped local authorities raise more than £4bn to rebuild and remodel school buildings, has established 75 new academies and helped set up over 50 free schools. She has recently set up an education procurement business consulting company, helping public sector organisations focus on optimal back office delivery, efficiency and compliance. Claire brings strategic knowledge of the education sector as well as in depth commercial and business experience. Claire is also a BPET Member.

Vicky Griffiths – Vice Chair and Chair of the Remuneration Committee

Vicky is a Partner at Independent Search Partnership LLP, where she leads the Board Practice – leading searches for Chairs and Non-Executive Directors.

Prior to this, Vicky worked at Leathwaite LLP in a similar role, and her experience also covers working for a large European asset manager for five years, where she was responsible for managing operational risk. Vicky is a governance, operational risk and controls specialist. As well as sitting on the BPET Board, Vicky also sits on the Finance & Risk Committee and Chairs the Remuneration Committee. She is known for clear logical thinking and communications, as well as strong relationship management and the ability to challenge fairly and diplomatically.

Vicky also has a non-executive role on the main committee at the Marylebone Cricket Club, a trustee of the British Olympic Association and is a director on the board of Vincent’s Trust at Oxford University. Vicky is also a non-executive director to RM plc.

David Thomas – Chair of the Finance, Audit & Risk Committee

David is an experienced assurance manager and qualified CIPFA accountant. He is a Board member at the Legal Aid Agency, which he joined in January 2017, heading the Assurance function. Having joined the Civil Service in 2005, David has worked in roles across departments including business, energy and ndustrial strategy, DCLG, Cabinet Office and HM Treasury. He has experience in policy development, finance business partnering, and financial analysis roles, and was previously Head of Internal Audit for DCLG. David was formerly a governor for a central London primary school, where he was Chair of the Finance and Resource Committee. David joined BPET in October 2016.

Steven Wade

Educated at Millfield School in Somerset, Steven comes from a teaching family and with over 20 years’ experience, he brings a wealth of knowledge to the group. In 2003, Steven became Assistant Head at Thamesmead School in Shepperton, where his responsibilities included IT strategy, learning and enrichment and community development, and in 2005 he went on to became Head at Gateway School, having completed an MA in Leadership and Management. Steven spent eight years at Gateway, before taking up his role as Group Education Director at Bellevue Education.

Steven supports Headteachers and their staff, allowing them to focus entirely on learning and development outcomes and instilling in every child a lasting love of learning.

Mark Malley, founding member

Mark founded Bellevue Education over ten years ago and is passionate about education.

In 2003, he took over a troubled London preparatory school which had failed two school inspections and was on the verge of closing. Within a year, Mark had turned the school around, achieving an Outstanding inspection report from the Independent Schools Inspectorate.

The school was graded Outstanding again in its next inspection and by the time Mark left the school in 2011 it was oversubscribed and sharing best practice with other schools.

Mark, now CEO of Bellevue Education, is wholly focused on ensuring that its schools achieve the very highest standards. He also advises other schools on issues such as assessment strategies and school leadership. Mark is also a BPET Member.

Simon Rule, founding member

Simon is founder and CEO of Place Group Ltd, a specialist consulting, research, project management and procurement company with 20 years’ experience working across the public and social sectors. He oversaw Place Group’s work in supporting 30 local authorities and hundreds of schools to develop their visions and implement their Building Schools for the Future strategies. Simon has led more than 50 academy projects across the country for a range of multi-academy sponsors as lead project management and education services adviser the Department for Education. He has also supported over 60 free school proposer groups develop their plans and help establish their schools from the beginning of the programme.

Simon has experience as a governor for primary, all-through and special needs schools, providing support and challenge across finance, recruitment, procurement, capital projects, business management, policy and strategic growth. He continues to provide consultancy to multi-academy trusts and local authorities on their education strategies and re-organisation to create efficient and effective organisations to drive up education standards and outcomes for young people.

Prior to founding Place Group in 2003, Simon had 20 years of experience in the marketing communications industry, working with major brands and developing online communications and education programmes for the private sector and universities.

Chris Gallant

Chris has worked in marketing, communications and crisis communications for the past 20 years for a range of businesses within the education sector, including school travel, educational IT and training companies, as well as with schools directly. Now he is a Director of Pharos Response Ltd, a risk, reputation and crisis management business serving clients in the education, youth, travel and adventure sectors.

In addition, he has previously been a Parent Governor for an Outstanding primary school in Richmond before deciding to switch allegiance to join the Advisory Board of BPET’s Deer Park School when his daughter first become one of the founding 12 pupils of the school. Chris joined the BPET Board in December 2017 as an elected parent trustee.

Sandeep Jain

Sandeep is an experienced bank Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with over 30 years’ experience, including 20 years at senior positions​ in banks. Currently, he is a financial consultant working with a Middle-Eastern bank on finance and treasury workstreams. Sandeep has previously worked with Standard Chartered Bank, Revver Bank and Bank of Baroda UK Ltd, primarily in CFO and treasury roles, with a focus on business partnering.

He set up a challenger digital bank in the UK from scratch, working through the regulatory bank licensing process. As a country CFO, he has managed large finance teams in multiple locations in the UK, Europe and Asia, being responsible for all areas of finance including IFRS accounting policies, financial management and regulatory reporting, external audits, strategic planning and budgeting, partnering with CEO and business heads.​

He has led and managed end to end projects relating to M&A, financial due diligence, bond issues, transforming finance functions, integrating acquisitions in multiple countries, finance systems implementation, designing and implementing financial controls.​ He has been a regular participant and member of different boards, and regularly presented at the Audit and Risk Committees. Sandeep holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.​

Besides London and Manchester, Sandeep has worked and lived in Mumbai, Singapore, New York and Jakarta. He currently lives in London.

Eamon Roach

Eamon is Company Secretary and clerk to the Board.

Trustee Attendance Record 2023-2024

For the attendance record for previous academic years, these are contained in the Audited Accounts for the relevant academic year.

Members

Claire Delaney and Mark Malley are both BPET Members.

Mervyn Douglas

Mervyn Douglas joined SVG Advisers in 2011 as a senior member of the investment team and sits on the SVG Capital Investment Committee. Prior to joining, he was a fund manager at Aviva Investors where he was responsible for the management of over £2 billion of UK Equities and the UK research analysts. Previously he was a UK equities fund manager at Legal & General and Schroder Investment Management. Mervyn achieved his AIIMR qualification and has a degree in Law from Nottingham University. Mervyn brings senior strategic business and finance experience.

Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson became a Member of BPET in May 2019. Emma has worked at Equality Now as the Director of Marketing and Communications since November 2017. Emma has spent nearly two decades developing creative marketing, brand and communication campaigns for not-for-profits organisations. Beginning her career at one of world’s biggest cancer research charities, she then moved on to work on three general elections at the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Most recently, Emma served as the Marketing Director at the Royal Society for Blind Children. She holds a B.Sc. in Politics from Plymouth University in the UK and is accredited from the UK’s Institute of Direct Marketing.

Martin Chilcott

Chairman and CEO 2degrees Ltd and Manufacture 2030. Founder and non-executive director of The Innovation Gateway Ltd. Martin is a purpose-driven, environmental and digital entrepreneur whose focus for over 30 years has been on launching new, disruptive businesses that catalyse large scale change to industries to improve their social and environmental impacts. Martin was the founder and CEO of one of the UK’s earliest digital agencies, Clarity IBD Ltd. On its sale in 2000, he worked briefly in corporate IT as Global Head of Innovation at Proxicom Inc., and then as Group Marketing Director for Dimension Data plc. In 2003, he co-founded the education consultancy Place Group with Simon Rule and Claire Delaney and then went on to set-up clean energy incubator Meltwater Ventures and the sustainable business network 2degrees.

Last updated: March 2024