ITC congratulates John Worthington on Honour
ITC Commissioner John Worthington
The ITC is delighted to congratulate Commissioner John Worthington on his MBE in the Queen’s 2016 New Year Honours List. John joined the ITC in 2011 and has been instrumental in leading the ITC’s ‘Ambitions and Opportunities’ project exploring the impacts of High Speed Rail on cities and regions.
ITC Director Matthew Niblett commented:
John’s prolific and tireless voluntary work has had a major impact in driving urban and county-level renewal programmes across the UK and he has also had a central role in changing national perceptions about the opportunities that transport infrastructure, particularly High Speed Rail (HSR), can bring for urban regeneration. Through his leadership of the ITC’s project, John has helped city leaders and representatives to see how HSR investment has been used by cities in Europe and to learn how to develop their own programmes for regeneration. This ground-breaking work influenced the government’s Growth Task Force, and the report from the ITC project, launched by the Secretary of State, was widely praised as offering a model for better connectivity at a city-region level.
John Worthington leads ITC visit to Rotterdam
Nationally, John was also a Director of the Academy of Urbanism from 2009-14, which he helped transform into the UK’s largest professional organisation for urban designers and practitioners. His energies resulted in several successful initiatives, including a national awards scheme to reward good city redevelopment, a mentoring scheme which has helped hundreds young urbanists to learn their craft, and visits to more than a hundred cities, towns and places to help them develop their renewal programmes. He was also Deputy Chairman of the advisory panel of the Prince’s Regeneration Trust until 2013, through which he was instrumental in raising funds and helping to save many historic buildings for community and public use. At a regional level. John was a founding Chairman of the Cambridgeshire Quality Panel in 2010, and he is also a Director of Changing Chelmsford, the Community Interest Company generating initiatives to improve the lives of the 110,000 residents of the city.
Professionally John was a founding director of internationally-renowned firm DEGW and he has also held Professorships at the Universities of York and Sheffield.