David Black and Jean Spencer recruited to NIC expert panel

Ofwat’s interim chief executive, David Black, and independent chair of the National Water Resources Framework Senior Steering Group, Jean Spencer, are among the water experts selected to join a new climate resilience advisory panel to support the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in the run up to the second National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA).

The panel is one of three just established by the NIC (the other two focus on levelling up and net zero) to offer expert advice, contribute ideas and challenge the Commission’s thinking.

News of the appointments came as the NIC published its corporate plan for the next three years in which it said the second NIA will be published in the second half of 2023. The process will begin this autumn with publication of a baseline analysis of the current state of each of key infrastructure sectors, alongside the Commission’s proposals for the strategic themes and main priorities it intends to explore in the next Assessment.

Producing a NIA every five years is one of the commission’s core responsibilities set out in its Charter with government. Its first such report, published in 2018, heavily influenced the government’s recent National Infrastructure Strategy.

The full membership of the climate resilience panel is:

David Balmforth, independent consultant and past president of the Institution of Civil Engineers;

David Black, interim chief executive, Ofwat;

Caroline Bryce, member, NIC Young Professionals Panel;

Sharon Darcy, director, Sustainability First;

Richard Dawson, Adaptation Committee member of the Climate Change Committee and professor of earth systems engineering at Newcastle University;

Suraje Dessai, professor of climate change adaptation, University of Leeds;

Caroline Douglass, executive director – flood and coastal risk management, Environment Agency;

Alistair Ford, lecturer in geospatial data analytics and Policy Academy fellow, Newcastle University;

Hannah Freeman, conservation policy officer, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust;

Jim Hall, professor of climate and environmental risk, University of Oxford;

Juliet Mian, deputy executive director, Resilience Shift; and

Jean Spencer, independent chair, National Water Resources Framework Senior Steering Group.

Membership of the other panels can be found at: https://nic.org.uk/about/nia2-expert-advisory-panels/