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 has a strong track record for innovation and high quality public service delivery as well as for exemplary community engagement. 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). He is currently serving as a member of the Department for Education’s review panel into the future delivery model for capital investment for schools.
He has extensive experience managing elections at all levels of Government and is the regional returning officer for London. In addition, Barry has a leading role across London on population, migration and the 2011 census. Barry has a PhD in social and political geography, is a Visiting Fellow in Social Policy & Politics at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is an Associate of the independent Institute for Government.