Company structure

The Court – 1st January 2010

The Past Masters (Assistant)

The Senior Assistants

Assistants

The Past Masters (EMERITI)

News from the Court (March 2010)

Two more liverymen have been appointed to help the Master and Wardens in their oversight of the Company’s affairs for the next three years.

Mr Peter Coe made the Assistant’s Declaration on 7th October 2009. After reading history at York University, Mr Coe gained experience in the management of archaeological sites and buildings conservation before entering the NHS’ Management Training Scheme in East Anglia. His first post-qualification appointment was in Nottingham, but he soon moved to Liverpool where he managed both hospital and community health services. In 1982 he built on that experience by undertaking the lead for service and capital planning for the then North West Thames Regional Health Authority. Thereafter he was recruited to be the Chief Executive of both North and East Hertfordshire Health Authorities, before being appointed Chief Executive of the East London and the City Health Authority in 1992. Indeed, he spent the ‘90s playing a major role in establishing the role of Health Authorities throughout England, besides being a member of several national working committees including the Chief Medical Officer’s Clinical Effectiveness Committee. In 2000, the Chief Executive of the NHS asked him to take the lead in the development of new management arrangements for the Prison Medical Service.

Having achieved that, Mr Coe was then appointed to a post which will already have made his name familiar to many members of this Company – that of Registrar of the General Optical Council. He retired in 2008, having introduced the statutory changes, recommended by the GOC, for the regulation of optometrists and dispensing opticians, as well as of the optical market.

Mr Coe has since reverted to his first love, archaeology. He gained his Master’s degree from the University of London in 2009, and is currently studying for his doctorate at its Institute of Archaeology. He has maintained his interest in regulation, which the Court hopes to harness to the benefit of the Awards Committee (now retitled the Qualifications Committee) through appointment as a non-registrant member of the Architects Regulation Authority.

Now married to the former Director of Public Health for London (and adviser to the Mayor), Professor Sue Atkinson, Mr Coe has two daughters, a son and a stepdaughter, all well into adult life. He lists his hobbies as growing plants (particularly orchids) and collecting works inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Mr Huntly Taylor, who will be well known to both liverymen and freemen as Chairman of the Spectacle Makers’ Society, made his Declaration on 8th December 2009. Educated at Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School, he trained as a dispensing optician with Rayners, qualifying in 1971.Within a year, he was managing three of their practices simultaneously in different parts of London, and rapidly acquiring a knowledge of the Capital’s transport system! He continued in management of various practices on behalf of different companies until, in 1993, he purchased the practice in Brighton in which he had undertaken his initial professional training. This still keeps him busy to today.

Mr Taylor served on ABDO Council for over ten years, and was a founder Director of the Eyecare Information Service (now the Eyecare Trust). He currently serves as a Trustee of theABDO College at Godmersham. He was made Free of the Spectacle Makers’ Company in 1994, and clothed as of the Livery a year later.

A keen sportsman, he played Sussex League cricket until 6 years ago, when his knees (or lack of them) forced him to confine his role to that of spectator; work keeps him from the golf course. His other interests include the theatre, most forms of music and good food and wine. Sadly, he was widowed in 2007, his late wife having also been a liveryman, but he has one daughter who thankfully likes to cook for him!