Strategy and sustainability consultancy Accelar has made two new appointments to support the next phase of growth for the business.

Michael Samways has been appointed as director of sustainability and the built environment and will not only support existing service lines, but also lead the development of new advisory services for clients. 

He joins from the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation where his role as head of development for the UK’s first 21st-century garden city was focused on case-making, project development and delivery for civic buildings, infrastructure and environmental projects, securing business case approval for more than £50m public investment. 

He has more than 20 years’ experience within the ESG, energy, environment and sustainability fields with a focus on the built environment.

He has undertaken technical due diligence for transactions on more than 1GW of renewable and low carbon energy assets and developed and secured finance for energy efficiency programmes across many sectors including financial services, healthcare, education, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. 

Michael has previously held leadership roles with Arcadis, E.ON, SKM and Enviros since the start of his career as an environmental planner with the Environment Agency.

Cara Clarke also joins the team in her first full-time role since graduating from Birmingham University after a successful internship with Accelar last year. 

She will be working to develop new digitally-enabled services for clients, with a specific focus on nature finance markets such as biodiversity net gain.

Accelar’s managing director Chris Fry said “We are delighted to have Michael and Cara on board as part of our plans to expand Accelar’s impact on the green transition during our fifth year. Having helped to identify and pilot an array of new ideas, we are now focusing on enabling our clients to combine and apply them to more places to achieve greater scale”.

Stantec, a global leader in sustainable design and engineering services, has appointed Andrew Johns as its Nature-based Solutions (NbS) lead for the UK and Ireland.

In his new role, Johns will support the growth of Stantec as a pioneer in NbS, bringing different sectors, clients, and colleagues together to share best practice and create solutions that are more integrated with the natural world.

Johns is a technical director, civil engineer, and project manager with 23 years’ experience working at the firm. From Stantec’s Taunton office, he has led the company’s flood risk and sustainable drainage team in South-west England while also being Stantec’s Nutrient Neutrality lead. 

As Stantec’s UK&I Nature-based Solutions lead, Johns will aim to make NbS a go-to method for scheme design across multiple sectors, helping support environmental resilience throughout the built environment.

He said: “As consultants working on the most transformative infrastructure schemes around the world during a climate crisis, we always need to be asking whether we can do things differently and more sustainably. We need to work with nature. We need to build better, using less carbon-intensive methods to create urban environments that support healthier ecosystems and have a net positive impact.”

Train operator Northern has appointed Jayne Breen as its new head of property. 

Breen, from Manchester, joins from Carlisle Support Services but is a familiar face as she was previously Northern’s head of engineering services.  

Prior to that she was also the train presentation delivery manager for services in the North-west, managing the teams that make sure Northern’s fleet of trains are clean for customers. 

In her new role, she will be responsible for managing the train operator’s property and operational teams across its 500-station estate. 

Northern has some 7,000 employees based across the North of England, including drivers, conductors, engineers, customer service and support staff.