Meet the team

The Board

  • Cornelia van der Poll

  • Jack Hayward Restore Trust team

    Jack Hayward

The Advisory Board

  • Caroline McAslan is a long-standing National Trust volunteer.

    Caroline McAslan has an Honours Degree in the History of Fine Art and a diploma in Museums and Art Galleries Administration from Manchester University. She was a long term (7 years) volunteer at two National Trust properties in Oxfordshire and interviewed fellow volunteers at many properties writing extensively on volunteering for the National Trust. In June 2021 she met Hilary McGrady to voice volunteer concerns at which meeting the notion of a Volunteers Charter was discussed. This has finally been introduced in June 2023.

  • R.I.P. Alastair Laing was a distinguished art historian and was Curator of Pictures and Sculpture of the National Trust from 1986 until 2012.

  • Ian Wilson CBE was previously an award winning Director of Social Services in London and an interim CEO in the NHS and is a long term Labour Party member. He believes that science and historical research should drive the updating of NT policy.

  • Philip Davies MA (Cantab), Dip.TP, MRTPI, IHBC, FR Hist S, FRAS, FSA is a former Planning and Development Director at English Heritage. He has been in the forefront of managing change to some of the most important historic buildings and places in London, the UK and the Commonwealth for almost 50 years. An experienced international heritage consultant, he is the Founder and current CEO of the Commonwealth Heritage Forum and the best-selling author of thirteen books on London, India and Burma.

  • Robert Jackson is a former MP and MEP and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He has published extensively on politics and is a member of the House of Commons Advisory Committee on Works of Art.

  • Neil Bennett Neil Bennett is Global Co-CEO of H/Advisors, where he advises governments, multinational organisations and Europe’s largest companies. Before becoming a consultant he was City and Business Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and was twice named Business Journalist of the Year in the UK Press Awards. He was Banking Correspondent and later Deputy Business Editor of The Times. He is a trustee of the Charles Dickens Museum and the Chailey Heritage Foundation, a school for children with complex neurodisabilities.