Queen's birthday honours for North and East Yorkshire residents
A number of people in North Yorkshire and East Yorkshire have received a BEM or a MBE as part of The Queen's birthday honours for this year.
A number of people in North Yorkshire and East Yorkshire have received a BEM or a MBE as part of The Queen's birthday honours for this year.
Here is the list:
Bernadette McKiernan BEM, 65, Snaith
Crew Manager, Humberside Fire and Rescue Services. For services to the community in Humberside
● Her primary employment is for Network Rail however, she is a true ambassador for On-Call Fire Stations and their role in communities.
● At the start of 2020, approximately 93 properties were flooded in the Snaith and East Cowick area after the River Aire burst its banks causing disruption on roads and train routes over the course of several weeks, as the rain continued.
● She opened the Fire Station, as a hub for agencies, including the Environment Agency and local authority.
● Epitomising the definition of a community leader, she was at the heart of all local support, whether officially or unofficially working from the Fire Station around the clock, seven days a week.
● She provided affected residents with support information, identified the most vulnerable for relevant agencies to ensure they were supported.
● She made space in the Fire Station for food, clothing and other donations to pass onto the distribution centres for those who had lost their possessions, as well as maintaining her commitment to responding to regular 999 calls with the crew.
● When she wasn’t at the Fire Station supporting the community, she was at Snaith Railway Station, supporting National Rail work to get the lines operational.
● Having joined Humberside Fire and Rescue Service in 2003, as an On-Call Firefighter at Snaith Fire Station, she is now Crew Manager.
● She strives to keep Snaith Fire Station at the heart of the local community and does this by organising community events at the Fire Station and attending other events to promote the Fire Station and Fire Safety messages.
Alison Stannard BEM, 50, Hull
Services Manager, Sight Support Hull and East Yorkshire. For services to People with Visual Impairments particularly during Covid-19
● Most visually impaired people have been locked in their homes during Covid-19, some without the support of relatives or friends.
● The Charity Sight Support Hull and East Riding (formerly Hull and East Riding Institute for the Blind) has been caring and supporting people with sight loss for over 155 years.
● She takes the wellbeing of all the charity’s service users and staff extremely seriously.
● She was successful in her role prior to COVID-19 but the pandemic has highlighted her strengths in leading a team which has developed new ways of helping and caring for vulnerable and socially isolated people.
● Under her leadership, the seven Community Advice Officers began telephoning everyone on Sight Support’s database.
● The purpose of the calls was to identify those who needed the most help and put support in place.
● For the most vulnerable who were alone, or had heightened feelings of loneliness and anxiety, the team has made weekly calls.
● Shopping and prescriptions have been delivered together with equipment such as magnifiers, talking book machines and radios.
● A team of 16 volunteers was organised to continue with the befriending telephone calls and shopping with a total so far of over 7,000 welfare calls made, 119 shopping trips, 66 referrals to other agencies, 169 IT support calls and 34 socially distanced home visits.
Daryl Perkins MBE, 59, Anlaby
District Manager, Humber and East Riding District St John Ambulance. For voluntary service to St John Ambulance and to Young People
● She has given over 40 years of voluntary service to St John Ambulance, holding some of the organisations most senior national positions, alongside her professional career as a Specialist Nurse and supporting a specialist charity committed to preventing childhood asthma deaths.
● She supports young people within the organisation’s Cadet divisions, with a keen focus on ensuring provision is there to support some of the county’s most deprived and remote children in Hull and along the east coast.
● As County Commissioner Youth, she was responsible for supporting all youth groups in the region, giving thousands of hours each year as well as organising annual youth camps of up to 150 young people.
● She has been responsible for thousands of young people acquiring life skills that have improved their chances and quality of life; offering many an escape from complex and traumatic home lives.
● She rose through the ranks to be National Chief Officer for Youth, responsible for all cadet and youth activities across England.
● She has continued to provide operational medical cover as a nurse at many key local, regional and national events, often leading teams of first aid and health professionals to ensure patients received a high clinical standard of care.
● She was the county’s County Nursing Officer for many years and now serves as the District Manager, responsible for all operational St John Ambulance activity across her patch, encompassing a fleet of seven ambulances and over 100 adult volunteers.
● This role has seen her play a crucial part during the Covid-19 pandemic.
● Not only helping volunteers to respond in a coordinated way to support the NHS, but by personally delivering additional training to ensure existing volunteers had the skills needed and that new volunteers could be on boarded to become effective.
● This saw her working most evenings and weekends for four months to ensure all operational and administrative tasks were completed, so volunteers could play their part in the national response.
● Her challenges continue as she supports volunteer units to manage in the virtual arena as physical meetings are off limits due to Covid, and as the organisation faces a financially bleak few years.
● In parallel to her operational roles she has been a stalwart of the Order of St John, the SJA charity’s royal parent body.
● She has developed the organisations honours and awards recognition system, visiting groups to support them in navigating the system and writing high quality citations leading directly to more members receiving recognitions. She chairs the initial screening committee for the honours and awards.
● She has also supported Breathe For Cameron, a charity created following the asthmatic death of a local boy, and a key member of their volunteer team, organising fundraising events and dinners raising tens of thousands of pounds to keep their vitally important work going.
John Oxley MBE, 64, Scarborough
For services to Heritage
● He is York’s specialist advisor on archaeological matters and the guardian of unique historical evidence.
● He has dedicated over 30 years to the protection, investigation and communication of York’s heritage.
● As a principal Archaeologist for York City Council, he has maintained an enthusiasm for and committed to his field and his work has impacted far beyond Yorkshire.
● He initiated the Council’s policy of requiring all development-led archaeology to have some form of community involvement whether by participation in the fieldwork itself, open days or guided tours.
● Through the Archaeological Forum, he has been instrumental in bringing together a great range of interest groups and stakeholders in the city’s archaeology, including historic England, York University, the council for British archaeology and the York Museum Trust, to work together on projects of mutual interest.
● His work has led to important discoveries such as the Extensive Roman Cemeteries, the Roman skeletons and the Victorian legacy.
● He has completed work which has added to York's status internationally.
● He is involved in the arts scene in York as a talented photographer and video artist. He was instrumental in bringing a group of contemporary artists from Germany to York resulting in wonderful art appearing around the city. He also represented York when traveling to China to lecture at The World Historical and Cultural Cities Expo on the subject of York’s Walls. He has helped to create a wide range of research projects, many linked to the Collaborative Doctoral Awards carried out in his department.
● This has ensured the development of those deeper perspectives which must underpin the enduring success of curatorial strategies in a complex such as York.
John told us: "It's completely unexpected, totally undeserved. It's a recognition that heritage is of huge importance.
"In the early 1990s there were perhaps half a dozen archaeological societies and history groups working in York and the area around it. Now, there are over 30.
John added that a recent discovery of suspected Roman remains in Scarborough will have a huge community impact: "There's the opportunity to use it as an open-air classroom, with the appropriate interpretation.
"To have something that is of international importance in Eastfield, a community that has all sorts of problems and issues, is fantastic."