Chris Saunders
Director
Chris worked in the NGO sector in international development for 30 years. The positions he held include policy and technical advisor; senior programme manager/director in southern Africa, the Middle East and Iraq; and Chief Executive Officer. He was awarded an OBE for his work with Save the Children in 2004. He believes the climate emergency is the most pressing issue of our age and that it will only be solved by a combination of political change and community-based action. There is no better example of community-based action than the work of Energise Sussex Coast.
Anna Sabin
Director
Anna has lived in St. Leonards for just over a year. “It’s wonderful here, but it has an enormous transition task ahead. For the previous thirty years, I lived on Dartmoor and before that in London where I rode my children about on my tricycle but everyone else drove cars. Since then London has been working on its transport, Hastings less so – it’s tarmacked, paved and garaged to the hilt and still most people don’t have the transport they’d like. So, as well as insulation, solar power and wind power, I’m agitating for clean, efficient transport so we all have a chance to be mobile and we get our streets and front gardens back”.
Richard Watson
Founder/Director
Richard Watson is a founder of ESC. He was awarded the OBE in 2016 for services to the community of Sussex. Previously he worked at the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford. He is a director of the Schools Energy Co-op and Community Energy South.
Julia Hilton
Director
Julia is a trained landscape architect and visual artist. As well as being the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Hastings and Rye, she is an active divestment campaigner and helped establish the Sustainable Transport Forum for Hastings.
Kate Meakin
Project and operations manager
Kate has worked for various NGOs for the past 13 years on campaigns focusing on fair trade, climate change and poverty. Alongside this Kate has been active in grassroots campaigning for the green movement. Favourite low carbon action: Working with school children to make a GIANT bobble hat for a home energy campaign as part of the Cardiff Transition Towns project.
Sarah Macbeth
Design manager
Sarah is a multi-disciplinary designer with an MA in Sustainable Design and a background in the non-profit and coop sectors. She has lived in Hastings since 2007. In 2015 she co-founded Transition Town Hastings and in 2018 established the Sustainability on Sea festival. Favourite low carbon action: creating a community garden.
Anton Hack
Outreach and projects
Anton recently completed his Environmental Studies degree. He previously worked with community land trusts to develop projects for affordable housing, job creation and maintaining green spaces. He is now engaged mainly in Outreach activities for ESC and maintains the social media outlets.
Arran Allison
Green Handyman and Off-grid expert
Arran is our Green Handyman and Energy Advisor. He visits local homes to install draught proofing and other energy saving measures. Arran lives off grid and has run workshops for ESC on renewable energy and off grid solar systems.