Sir Martin Narey DL
Non-Executive Director
Sir Martin Narey DL, who joined Sanctuary Personnel as a Non-Executive Director in August 2020, is no stranger to managing change within the public sector. His work on advising the Government on a variety of impactful criminal justice and social transformation programmes, makes him a welcome addition to Sanctuary’s leadership team as a Board-level advisor.
His dynamic approach to being able to cut through even the most complex of public sector service challenges enables him to offer unparalleled foresight and solutions. Sir Martin Narey DL has always had a strong appetite for reform following a career as a Prison Governor before moving on to several prominent Home Office and criminal justice advisory roles in the 90s. Between 1998 and 2003 he held the most senior position within the Prison Service and became the first CEO of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). In recognition of his impact, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Leadership from The UK Chartered Institute of Management; the first public sector recipient in over ten years.
After leaving NOMS, he turned his attention to children’s social care. Having worked in penal reform for most of his life, he understood the obvious connection between child poverty and incarceration, and in 2005 accepted the role of Chief Executive of Barnardo’s. During his five years at the helm of Barnardo’s, he chaired The Campaign to End Child Poverty, which saw Barnardo’s grow by almost 40% to become, once again, the UK’s largest children’s charity. Keeping with children’s social care, he left Barnardo’s to focus his attention on adoption reform on which he advised the Prime Minister and DfE. Since then, he has continued to advise the Government on a wide range of children’s social care challenges. Most notably, he has published landmark reports on Children in Care, social work training and, most recently the fostering system in England (2018).
Although he lives a very busy life, Martin is a family man at heart and loves nothing more than soaking-up the wonders of Whitby where he lives with Jan, his wife of 42 years.
