Misplaced Pages

Richard Best, Baron Best

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
(Redirected from Baron Best) British peer (born 1945)
This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous.
Find sources: "Richard Best, Baron Best" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Right HonourableThe Lord BestOBE DL FAcSS
Lord Best in 2022
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office
4 June 2001
Life peerage
Personal details
Born (1945-06-22) 22 June 1945 (age 79)
Political partyNone (crossbencher)
Alma materUniversity of Nottingham

Richard Stuart Best, Baron Best, OBE, DL, FAcSS (born 22 June 1945) is an independent Crossbench Member of the House of Lords with a special interest in housing issues.

Biography

The son of Walter Best DL and Frances Chignell, Best was educated at Shrewsbury School and the University of Nottingham. He married Ima Akpan in 1970, divorcing in 1976. Best married Belinda Stemp in 1978 and has two daughters and two sons with his two wives. One of his sons, Will Best, is a television presenter.

From 1970 to 1973, Best served as director of the British Churches Housing Trust, then of the National Federation of Housing Associations 1973–1988. From 1988 to December 2006, he led the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust. He has written extensively on housing and chaired commissions on housing for Northern Ireland, Westminster, Birmingham, Brent, Glasgow and Hull.

Best is a member of the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee, and has previously chaired the House of Lords Audit Committee between 2005 and 2010 and the Select Committee on Communications between 2014 and 2017. Lord Best has previously sat on the Built Environment Committee, EU Home Affairs Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee. He is also president of the Sustainable Energy Association and co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People. Lord Best served as chair of the Hanover Housing Association 2006–2015, and chaired The Property Ombudsman between 2009 and 2017. He was president of the Local Government Association 2007–2016, Commissioner of the Rural Development Commission 1989–1998, trustee and treasurer of the Royal Society of Arts 2007–2014, and a member of the NCVO Advisory Council 2008–2016. Lord Best has also chaired the Oxford University Commission on Creating Healthy Cities (2022), the Affordable Housing Commission (2020) and the Devon Housing Commission (2024).

On 4 June 2001, Best was created a life peer as Baron Best, of Godmanstone in the County of Dorset. He sits as an independent crossbencher in the House of Lords.

Honours

Best was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1988 New Year Honours.

He has been awarded honorary degrees from the Universities of York and Sheffield. In September 2014, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA. He is a Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of North Yorkshire.

References

  1. "No. 56232". The London Gazette. 13 June 2001. p. 6953.
  2. "No. 51171". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1987. p. 9.
  3. "Conferment of New Fellows" (PDF). Academy of Social Sciences. September 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 August 2017 – via Internet Archive.
  4. "Who are the deputy lieutenants?". North Yorkshire County Council. Archived from the original on 17 November 2014 – via Internet Archive.

External links

Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom
Preceded byThe Lord Ashcroft Gentlemen
Baron Best 		Followed byThe Lord Rooker
Categories: