Sam leads the Combined Authority’s work to improve the city-region’s natural environment through developing strategy and policy, delivering key projects and working with a range of partners. This includes the £4m IGNITION project, which seeks to increase and attract alternative sources of investment into greening urban areas to help adapt the city-region to climate change. Prior to that, Sam led the development of the Mayor’s 5 Year Environment Plan.

Sam joined GMCA in October 2018 on secondment from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs where most recently he was Head of Strategic Coordination. Before that, Sam held various roles in the civil service, including working on Liverpool City Region’s devolution agreement and designing and implementing government policy on tackling bovine TB. Before the civil service, Sam was an environmental consultant, working with businesses to reduce their environmental impact and to implement environmental management systems.