Debbie England
Associate Consultant
d.england@reading.ac.uk
Debbie is a Human Resources specialist. She specialises in HR Strategy, people change, complex employee relations, leadership and governance.
Debbie brings extensive Human Resources experience, particularly relating to people aspects of change management. This includes resolution of complex employee relations issues. She also brings experience in governance, where she has developed the charter and action plan for the Universities in Wales in 2020 as part of the Camm review.
Debbie joined SUMS as an associate in 2020. Prior to this, she had been working as HR Director at the University of the West of England for 10 years. In this role, she developed and delivered a people and performance strategy. This strategy transformed the HR function by introducing an online HR functionality across all HR services. Moreover, she led HR aspects of complete restructure of professional services, which delivered more consistent student experience and significant cost savings.
Debbie led UWE’s equality and diversity team. During her tenure, UWE achieved the highest HE ranking in Stonewall index. In addition, UWE also achieved Athena Swan accreditation at both University wide and departmental levels.
Prior to working in HE, Debbie worked in Financial Services for 17 years, in both specialist and generalist senior HR roles. Her work at HBOS includes the development of a Trades Union partnership agreement, harmonisation of terms and conditions across multiple divisions and development and delivery of grading and market pay strategy.
On top of this, Debbie is a non-legal member of the South West Employment Tribunal Service and a qualified workplace mediator. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD).
Debbie is a Trustee of two Bristol based charities: St Monica’s Trust and Musicspace. She is committed to robust governance and has overseen the introduction of remuneration governance at St Monica’s. Debbie also chairs the digital transformation Programme board. Having previously been chair of governors at the primary school, she is now a school governor of a large secondary school in Bristol. Furthermore, Debbie has also been a mentor on various Bristol City Wide leadership development programmes.
In her spare time, Debbie enjoys choral singing.