About our Trustees

IAS has a maximum of 16 Trustees at any one time (although this can be changed by a Board resolution) who serve for a period of three years. Their appointment may be renewed for a further three years.

There are normally four main Board meetings a year (two of them being part of an overnight stay for awaydays in the spring and autumn) and there are also other committees on which Trustees may serve if they wish. Currently the committees comprise:

Finance & Performance
Renumeration
Nomination

IAS seeks to have a Board as representative as possible of all the skills required (set out in a separate paper but summarised below) as well as gender, ethnic and geographical representation. Trustees are paid reasonable expenses (such as travel and accommodation)involved in discharging their duties as Trustees but are not entitled by law to receive remuneration. They are both Trustees of the charity and directors of IAS (which is also a company limited by guarantee).
Skills required on the Board:

financial: possibly an accountant or finance director to take the post of Treasurer
personnel: someone who can advise on personnel issues.
legal: someone with a background in the law (not necessarily immigration law although that would be helpful).
advice giving: someone who has been involved with advice giving agencies who understands the pressures and sensitivities of the work.
social work: someone who understands the nature of social work and the problems of a provider.
regional representation: to cover England, Wales, Scotland and, possibly, Northern Ireland.
voluntary work: someone who understands the use of volunteers and their interaction with paid staff, experience in the voluntary sector.
religious organisations: someone who has links with various religious bodies.
education: someone who has been involved with public education programmes who could suggest approaches for IAS.
industry: someone who has contacts with industry and who could suggest approaches and links for IAS.

We are also looking for marketing/fundraising skills and experience as an employer of Small & Medium sized Enterprises, in running overseas offices, community links, membership of other Boards, management of a legal practice of comparable size: eg major law firm. We wish to have the widest possible representation as to gender, ethnicity, age and geography and would welcome younger persons, leading former/existing politicians, former ambassadors/High Commissioners and those with knowledge/experience of problems/profile of clients.

If you feel that you have any of these skills and would like to discover more about becoming a Trustee of IAS then please contact the Chief Executive's office.

Current Trustees:

John Scampion CBE joined the board in November 2005 and is the Chair of Trustees.

As the first Commissioner for Immigration Services John established the OISC- the immigration advice regulator. He is currently chairman or the Determinations Panel of the Pensions Regulator, member of the Healthcare Commission, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeals Panel and of ICSTIS, the premium phone rate regulator.

He was previously Chief Executive of Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council and Commissioner for the Social Fund.

Dr Frances Dow is the Vice Chair of the Trustees.

Frances joined the Board of Trustees in April 2003. She is a retired academic who until recently was Vice Principal at the University of Edinburgh. She is a lay member of the Council for the Regulation of Healthcare Professionals and a Vice Chair of one of four Lothian Health Research Ethics Committees. She is also a member of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics and has been Deputy Chair of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission.

Ali Akbar joined the board in June 2003. Ali is a social development professional who has worked in the UK and Pakistan on issues of race and equality; social justice, good governance and community empowerment. In the eighties he worked with a number of local authorities in the field of Race and Equal Opportunities with a particular focus on housing. He developed the first Race and Housing policy for Oldham MBC and helped establish a networking forum for race and housing professionals in the North. In 1988 he left to work in Pakistan, firstly with VSO as it Programme Director, Ali then worked with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), transforming a bilateral project into one of the largest development support NGOs in Pakistan which he headed till his return to the UK early this year.

His voluntary work has included establishing one of the first Asian residents association in Rochdale, chairing Race and Housing Working Group for Rochdale MBC and participating at a number of government and international donor advisory forums in Pakistan.

Currently, Ali is on the Board of IUCN, The World Conservation Union as Councillor for West Asia and a Trustee of Al Mahmood Foundation, a newly established charity that aims to promote health and education in Pakistan. He is currently a freelance consultant specialising in community empowerment.

Chris Evans is the Treasurer and joined the Board in April 2004. Chris has a degree in Economics and is a chartered accountant. Chris has worked in large organisations but more recently has run a number of small and medium sized businesses, mainly in the marketing and marketing services sector. Chris is also a trustee of a charity involved in African development projects.

Robin Rennie joined the board in September 2007. Robin has had careers in teaching, residential child care, training, social work, social work management and independent consultancy. Born and bred in Glasgow, Robin’s family moved to Shrewsbury when he was 9. He undertook his teacher training in Birmingham and then taught in Solihull. He worked in residential social work in Surrey and Birmingham before joining Essex Social Services in 1977 as a Training Officer. He then moved into a succession of management posts and was appointed Head of Community Care in 1995.

In 2000, Robin was seconded to establish the East of England Regional Consortium for Asylum and Refugees. Within a year he left Essex and continued managing the Consortium as an Independent Consultant. During this time he became a founder member of the National Refugee Integration Forum and chaired the Health and Social Care Group. He is the Programme Director of HARP, a research and website organisation specialising in health issues for asylum seekers and refugees. He was also an advisor to the EU Committee of the Regions. Robin has also managed the Scottish Asylum and Refugee Consortium and was a member of the Refugee Nurse Task Group. He is a Steering Group member of ECSR (Enabling Christians in Serving Refugees) and a Director of SMYLE, a not-for profit company specialising in working with young asylum seekers and refugees on integration and cohesion issues. On a personal note, Robin has 8 children from 2 marriages, is a school Governor and lives in Colchester.

Liz Nelson OBE joined the board in March 2005. Liz was born in the USA and graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont. She came to London to do further study for a year and stayed and stayed and…! Although Liz had studied clinical psychology, she found her first job at Mars Ltd and then went on the spend most of her working life in the market research. Liz started the company Taylor Nelson now (TNS plc) which has become the world’s second largest market research company.

Liz left TNS in 1992 to become the first director of the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, which opened carers centres in 40 areas within the next two years. They raised the money first by going to firms like Prudential, BT, and the Royal Bank of Scotland and leveraged twice their donations from the local authority. She then did a stint chairing the Ecolabelling Board, the UK arm of the EU organisation whose aim is to assess products for their environmental impact; deputy Chair of Council Open University and Chair of Council University of Roehampton; President of the World Association of Public Opinion Research; and for nine years Liz was a non-executive director of the Royal Bank of Scotland plc.

Liz started in the NHS as the Chair of the South West London Community Trust 1997-2002 and became very involved in increasing public/patient involvement. From there she was asked to head up the fundraising research arm of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, known as WellBeing (renamed WellBeing of Women).

Having thoroughly enjoyed the challenges facing medical research charities given the huge changes in the funding of research in British universities, Liz jumped at the opportunity last June to move to CGD Research Trust which is funding important state of the art research at a time when Britain is leading in the treatment of genetic disorders.

Liz’s other present positions include Chair of Stargate Capital Investment Group Ltd, Councillor of City and Guilds, member of Advisory Committee for Degree Awarding Powers (Quality Assurance Agency) and non-executive director of a number of limited companies. On the personal side, Liz has three children and seven grandchildren.

Jonathan Treacher joined the board in June 2005. Jonathan is a trained lawyer and works as an investment banker in London and Switzerland. He sits on the boards of a number of companies across a range of sectors, primarily, but not exclusively, in financial services. He also has business interests in East Africa. Jonathan has a strong interest in immigration issues and the effective delivery of services.

Kam-sang Law joined the board in April 2007. Kam-sang worked in the Hong Kong government from 1971 to 1993. He was then appointed as the Deputy Secretary General in the Hong Kong Legislative Council where he worked until his retirement in 2004. He left Hong Kong to join his children in the UK and was appointed on a voluntary basis as the Chief Executive of the Chinese Information and Advice Centre from September 2004 – December 2006. Kam-sang currently works as a Justice of the Peace, is an Ambassador of the Hong Kong Scouts in London, Trustee and Company Secretary of the London Chinese Community Network and Trustee of the Meridian Society.

Honorary President

His Hon Judge Mota Singh QC is Honorary President of the Immigration Advisory Service.

He sat as a Crown Court Judge at Southwark and is well known in the Sikh community and elsewhere. He was educated and brought up in Nairobi, becoming a city councillor and alderman, secretary of the Kenya Law Society and vice chairman of Kenya Justice. After coming to Britain he was a member of the Race Relations Board and is a patron of the Anne Frank Foundation, St George’s Hospital Tooting and the Swami Narayan Mandir in Neasden. He was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1956, was a recorder 1979-82 and became a circuit judge in 1982 where our present Chief Executive, then both an MP and practising at the Bar, first encountered him sitting in Chichester Crown Court. He holds an honorary LLD from the Guru Nanak Dev University. He has been married for more that 50 years and has two sons and one daughter. He served as Chairman of the Trustees from 2000 until 2005. He was appointed Honorary President in 2005.