Mr Richard Penn

Born and brought up in South Wales, Mr Penn is an economics graduate of University College, Cardiff.  After a post-graduate course at University College, Swansea and teaching for a while at University College, Cardiff he started his 27-year career in local government in 1971 working for Glamorgan County Council as Director of the Upper Afan Community Development project.  

He held senior posts with a number of Welsh and English authorities before being appointed as Chief Executive of Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council and Clerk to Merseyside police Authority in 1980.

In 1989 he was appointed as Chief Executive of Bradford City Council, the fourth largest metropolitan authority, from which post he took early retirement at the end of 1998 and shortly after moved back home to Wales.

He has since developed a portfolio of public sector activity from a new base in Penarth where he lives with his wife Jill who is Chair of the North Glamorgan NHS Trust. That portfolio includes Chairing the Probation Board for South Wales and consultancy work in local authorities.  

Mr Penn was an Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) Commissioner from 1997 to 2002 and a Legal Services Commission Member from 2000 to 2003.

Mr Penn was previously employed as the National Assembly’s Independent Adviser on Standards. The Assembly’s resolution of 2 March 2005 paved the way for the appointment of the first ever Assembly Commissioner for Standards, replacing the position of Independent Adviser.