Tricia Zipfel

Tricia has 30 years experience of working with disadvantaged communities, service providers and decision-makers, to tackle poverty and neglect through better service delivery, citizen engagement and community empowerment. In addition to her ‘on the ground’ experience, she has undertaken various research projects and advised government on policy development and practice.

In 2001 she was appointed as senior community adviser to the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) in the department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), with responsibility for the NRU’s Community Participation programmes, the national Community Form and policy advice across the department. She also worked on the development of Local Strategic Partnerships, Local Area Agreements and the wider community empowerment agenda in the local government white paper. This secondment ended in October 2006.

Before joining the NRU, Tricia co-founded and then ran the Priority Estates Project (PEP), a national research and development project, which pioneered tenant and neighbourhood management, promoted resident-control and social enterprise, and developed a national training programme for residents and workers from some of the most unpopular areas of social housing in the country.

She has served on a number of national advisory bodies including the government’s Review of Co-operative Housing, the Rowntree Inquiry into Income and Wealth, and UKCAP/Oxfam’s Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power.

Tricia’s interests remain focused on transforming poor communities through resident empowerment and neighbourhood management. She is particularly keen to explore overseas experience of participatory democracy and citizen engagement, especially in the newer democracies in the ‘south’ and is currently taking this work forward with the Young Foundation, in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, DfID, CLG, the LGA and IDeA.

Tricia is a graduate of Newcastle University, the London School of Economics and the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee. She is a trustee of ‘Just Change’, an international ‘fair trading’ network linking local communities in India and the UK and of ‘Faith in the Future’ a Muslim-led, inter-faith project in east London. She is also an active member of TELCO, the east London branch of London Citizens.