Barry Quirk CBE
Chief Executive, London Borough of Lewisham
Barry Quirk CBE, chief executive, London Borough of Lewisham
Barry has been chief executive at Lewisham since 1994. He has worked in local government for over 30 years, with service and management experience in five London Councils. Lewisham is an inner London Council serving a socially diverse population of 260,000 people. The Council has a directly elected Mayor and 54 Councillors.
Barry has been involved in policy development and public management at regional and national levels for over a decade. He served a four year term (2002-6) as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of HM Revenue & Customs. He was an independent member of two capability reviews of HM Treasury (in 2001 and 2008). Between 2004 and 2009, Barry was appointed by Government to be the National Efficiency Champion for local government. In 2007 he produced a landmark report for Government on the potential transfer of public assets to community groups. And between 2006-8 he was the President and Chairman of SOLACE (the national association for local government chief executives).
Barry has a PhD in social & political geography and a CBE for services to local government. He writes regularly on public policy and management and his book, Re-imagining Government, was published in 2011 to critical acclaim. Barry is a Senior Fellow of Social Policy & Politics at Goldsmiths, London University; an Associate with the independent Institute for Government; and a Member of Collaborate (which promotes private, public and social sector collaboration) at the South Bank University, London.