The Directors and Volunteers

The Team

Our Directors
Friends of the Cotswolds is an independent registered charity, and company limited by guarantee. It was set up to for the specific purpose of conserving, enhancing and promoting the Cotswolds heritage, environment and community life.

Friends is run by a board of directors. The first group of Friends Directors were appointed in 2007. We are all volunteers, with a wide range of interests, knowledge, backgrounds and opinions, but we all have one thing in common - a love of the Cotswolds.

We have strong connections with the area, either living or working here; and care about the Cotswold landscape and the local communities. our aim is to support and encourage projects which benefit the landscape, flora and fauna and the people who live, work or visit here.

We are responsible for the charity’s activities. We meet at least 4 times each year to set the broad strategy and monitor progress. We consider applications for grant support, and direct the projects which we run ourselves.

Our varied backgrounds include industry, government, health, media and the legal profession. See our individual profiles below for further information about us.

The current Chairman is Simon Randall CBE.

Simon Randall (Chairman)

Kate Farquhar-Thomson
Kate is Head of Publicity at Oxford University Press.  She graduated from Nottingham University with an Agricultural Science degree and continues to pursue her passion for the outdoors as a Cotswold Voluntary Warden, a member of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust and as a keen gardener and keeper of free range chickens.

David Glenn
Fellow of the Royal Institute of chartered Surveyors and a Member of the Institute of Quarrying. Has held various senior management posts within the quarrying industry over the last thirty years. He has been Managing Director of Huntsmans Quarries Ltd for the last seven years. David has also served in the past as a Director of the Quarry products Association and also served on a DEFRA Regional Aggregate Working Party.

Sir David Pepper
David was the Director of GCHQ in Cheltenham until 2008, and has lived in Gloucestershire since 1972. He studied physics at Oxford University, and spent almost all his career in GCHQ.  Since his retirement, he has taken on a non-executive role with Gloucestershire County Council, and a number of other non-executive posts in the public and private sectors.  His pastimes include walking, a pleasure for which being retired in the Cotswolds provides the ideal opportunity.

David Courtney
David Courtney was born in Oxford and studied business at Lady Spencer Churchill College (today Oxford Brooks University). He has worked as a self employed consultant for various financial institutions since 1996 having been a Director of the London Securities and Derivatives Exchange. He has a keen interest in organic farming, industrial heritage and environmental issues.