COVID-19 heroes in Hampshire and Dorset are celebrated in New Year's Honours list

In the very worst of years, the very best of society are being honoured in the 2021 New Year Honours list.

In the full list of names and honours awarded, COVID-19 is mentioned 228 times.

Among the recipients are unsung heroes who have battled to save lives and keep the NHS afloat to those who have kept the country smiling by spreading kindness.

Here are the people in the south who've been recognised:

Professor Keith Godfrey MBE

Southampton, Hampshire

Medical Doctor and Clinical Scientist, Professor of Epidemiology, University of Southampton. For services to Medicine during the Covid-19 Response

● He has led in conceiving, developing and successfully executing a pivotal programme to assist the United Kingdom government in negotiating its emergence from the COVID pandemic. In early April 2020, with the pandemic lockdown fully implemented, the impact of COVID-19 was becoming apparent.

● He was part of a national group of senior public health clinicians and epidemiologists who wrote to the government pointing out that extended periods of lockdown will increase economic and social damage, and noting disparities that would become more pronounced the more severe the national situation.

● Stimulated by these discussions, he went on to assemble a large interdisciplinary team of experts in public health, social science, behavioural science, education and infectious disease molecular biology, developing a partnership between the University of Southampton, Southampton City Council and the NHS to deliver a hugely ambitious pilot programme for weekly testing with rapid scale up to mass population testing once the testing strategy is proven.

● The data generated by the programme that he has led will have pivotal importance to the national confidence in measures to prevent transmission of infection, and will permit informed management of any secondary spikes of infection which arise in the future.

Dr Katrina Cathie MBE

Southampton, Hampshire

Consultant Paediatrician, University Hospital Southampton. For services to Paediatrics and the Covid-19 Response

● She is a consultant paediatrician at Southampton Children’s Hospital within UHS, working in general paediatrics and paediatric research. General Paediatrics involves caring for children and families supporting 24/7 cover on wards and she also covers outpatient clinics.

● She developed a specialist interest in children with secondary epilepsy and now works as part of the MDT (multi-disciplinary team), which has dramatically improved the service. In her paediatric research time she focused on vaccine studies in children, ward based studies including early phase antibiotic research and taking part in large national portfolio studies.

● She is chair of national NIHR CRN (National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network) general paediatric group and regional lead for paediatric research with the CRN as well as co-lead for organising the regional PIER (paediatric innovation, education and research) network conference bringing together health professionals for shared learning, and to collaborate to improve care for children and their families locally and nationally.

● In the first months of the COVID-19 crisis she volunteered to be redeployed from research to cover clinical shifts in paediatric and short-stay units, as well as covering colleague sickness and organising new shifts and rotas for the paediatric team.

● Since the Covid vaccine study was introduced at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with Oxford, she has shared oversight of it, supporting the large team involved from a medical perspective, working with research staff, nurses and fellows from around the region to recruit hundreds of participants to the trials, and helping to spearhead the vaccine project.

● Since November 2019, she has been the lead principal investigator locally for the Janssen Covid-19 vaccine trial.

● She is also a member of the paediatric steering group for the national RECOVERY trial, testing non-vaccine treatments for the virus, and part of recruiting children to this study.

Dr Nisreen Alwan MBE

Hampshire

Associate Professor in Public Health, Southampton University. For services to Medicine and Public Health during Covid-19

● She was pivotal in assembling a national group of senior public health clinicians and epidemiologists who wrote a letter to the government pointing out that extended periods of lockdown will increase economic and social damage and noting racial disparities that would become more pronounced the more severe the national situation.

● She has worked with a large interdisciplinary team of experts in public health, social science, geospatial mapping, technological scientists in infectious disease and molecular biology and Southampton City Council to develop a hugely ambitious plan to deliver a pilot for weekly testing with rapid scale up to City wide testing once the testing strategy is proven.

● As of late May 2020 her pilot was acting as the blueprint for regional and national rollout of a whole population testing and tracing to prevent further lockdown and its social and economic consequences, and to protect the NHS.

● Her professional, technical, and interpersonal skills have been key in managing the wide ranging programme of work and bringing all the participating sectors, people, and organisations together to deliver the master plan.

● She has continued to co-ordinate the expert Public Health group to discuss key aspects of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in prominent media exposure.

● She is nationally recognised for her work on intersectionality, with a focus on reducing inequalities in mother and child health and also acts as a postgraduate teacher and research supervisor.

● Has also raised awareness for long covid

● Is listed on the BBC top 100 women from around the world

Joe Garcia MBE

Director of Operations, South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust. For services to Emergency Response, particularly during the Covid-19 Response

● He has served 35 years in the Ambulance Service, joining in 1985, following his service in the Royal Marines during which time he saw active service during the Falklands War and in Northern Ireland.

● Over the years leading up to the pandemic, he has been the operations Director of the South East Coast Ambulance Service, joining on an interim basis at a time of leadership crisis, just after the Trust was put into special measures and the entire team of Executives had been moved on, before being asked to stay on a permanent basis.

● His leadership was a key factor in the Trust being rated as Good or Outstanding by the CQC last August, the latter for patient care and for leadership.

● During the COVID-19 crisis he has driven the Trust's efforts across the entire SE of England and has had unparalleled success, delivering the Trust’s best ever performance despite up to 600 front line staff sick or self-isolating because of the disease.

● He has gone to great personal lengths to ensure supplies of PPE and hand sanitiser for the trust’s front line workers, has created and led a massive communications drive to promote social distancing in the trust, and introduced calls with staff up to four times a week to ensure that staff are kept informed at a time of real uncertainty.

Patricia Jane Pease MBE

Farnborough, Hampshire

Associate Chief Nurse for Safeguarding, Mental Health and Learning Disabilities. For services to Nursing, particularly during the Covid-19 Response

● She is the Associate Chief Nurse for Safeguarding and Mental Health at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust and the Designated Professional for Child Death, Berkshire West.

● She is a dual registered child and adult nurse, with a focus on safeguarding for both groups, and works tirelessly to improve the lived experience in the community of both young people and adults with mental health needs and learning disabilities who need acute healthcare.

● She collaborated with Festival Republic to organise a series of workshops aimed at conducting qualitative research, and educating young people, to improve safety and safeguarding arrangements in place at Reading Festival.

● She was at the forefront of leading and innovating the trust’s care delivery to support patients and their families during COVID-19. With hospital visiting restricted, she was instrumental in quickly leading and establishing a family liaison service to facilitate communication between patients and families, and she has continued to lead the visitor’s charter for the Trust with a focus on enabling safe compassionate care for families.

● She recognised the need to support colleagues in local nursing and residential homes, in spite of her own team’s increased workload, and accordingly mobilised a team and developed a framework to provide education, support and advice to local care homes.

Jonathan Carter MBE

Weymouth, Dorset

Chief Engineer Stealth, Atlas Elektronik UK. For services to Naval Operational Effectiveness

● After 35 years he is the leading expert on the ocean-acoustic environment.

● He has spent a significant amount of time at sea with operational crews, participating in the pursuit of tactical advantage.

● His understanding of the exploitation of the ocean-acoustic environment for tactical advantage is formidable, and has led to the procurement of new sensors, many of which are still in operational service today.

● He has optimised sensor performance resulting in a way to detect maritime platforms which had not been possible before.

● He has also worked on a variety of submarine, ship and helicopter projects, including design and testing equipment to exploit novel sonar processing.

● During a project aimed at improving surface ship detection of submarines, he highlighted concerns with the sonar on board the Merlin helicopter, leading to huge improvements in capability when these issues were resolved.

● Able to recognise hidden talent in others, he has forged a core team of individuals who constitute a body of excellence in the underwater environment, not replicated anywhere else across defence.

Anne Isobel Baker MBE

Salisbury, Wiltshire

Volunteer Fundraiser, NSPCC. For charitable services, particularly during Covid-19

● She is a lifelong volunteer fundraiser for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), with over 50 years of work.

● She has adapted her fundraising methods to accommodate her now advanced age and most recently to work around her requirement to shield during the current crisis.

● She was originally invited to join her local committee, in Salisbury, for the NSPCC over six decades ago, and has been involved in a wide range of different fundraising events and initiatives over that time.

● Ten years ago, at the age of 95, she initiated a new fundraising event that would allow her to continue her activities - an annual coffee morning for her birthday in May, handwriting her own invitations and inviting large numbers of friends, relatives, neighbours and local NSPCC volunteers.

● These events typically raise around £1,500 for the NSPCC, to the benefit of vulnerable children nationally.

● This year, aged 106, she was unable to host this event due to the lockdown, so set up a Just Giving page with the original intention of collecting donations from her usual guests, asking them to donate remotely instead so that she could continue to help the children supported by the charity during the lockdown.

● Instead, the fundraising appeal received a flood of support from a much wider range of supporters, raising over £4,000 in a short space of time, more than twice what her usual party would have raised in an ordinary year.

Sharon Sear BEM

Fareham

Commercial Manager, Transport for London. For services to Transport in London during the Covid-19 Response

● She was crucial to keeping thousands of people safe and London moving during the pandemic.

● She identified that Transport for London (TfL) risked of PPE running out but she put control measures in place prior to lock down hitting TfL’s supplies harder.

● She changed procurement practices, implemented new control methods for ordering and set up a secure portal with suppliers to get the right PPE for TfL, including literally millions of face coverings as well as hundreds of thousands of hand sanitisers.

● At the same time she rapidly looked at the bigger picture and used her expertise to understand where suppliers were getting their stock from to ensure that they were not using the same manufacturers.

● Without her personal impact TfL would have run out of critical PPE needed to keep London moving.

● PPE was supplied to staff across TfL and bus drivers as well as contract cleaners.

● Vitally she also helped the NHS in getting face masks at the peak of the shortage, safeguarding critical NHS workers.

● She has diversified manufacturing countries to ensure that TfL is well placed for a second wave and put this in place, so it is now seen as business usual, which is a true testament.

● This far extended her day to day role of procurement manager, one of the many cogs which keeps TfL’s delivery teams going.

● He now works at the National Oceanography Centre.

Richard Andrews BEM

Portchester, Hampshire

For services to the community in Portchester, Hampshire

● He is a former churchwarden and active member of the church community responsible for carrying out many vital services both during and since his term as churchwarden

● He is a self-taught cabinet maker who has done a large amount of woodwork for the church and the community, including building a large altar base and altar rails, ongoing church maintenance, repairs to the Vicar’s and Curate’s houses, and designing and carving the wood for a WWII memorial, including lifelike silhouettes of WWII servicemen.

● He organises the Castle Summer Galas and Christmas Fayres, as well as Burns’ Night and St George’s Night events and lunches for lonely and isolated residents in the village hall around Christmas and on Christmas Day itself.

● He is a volunteer at the Royal Naval Museum Portsmouth, showing visitors around HMS M33, the sole remaining veteran from the Dardanelles campaign, and gives lectures locally on the subject of naval history.

Golam Chowdhury BEM

Portsmouth, Hampshire

Refugee Support Staff and Emergency Responder, British Red Cross. For services to Healthcare during the Covid-19 Response

● He is involved in a wide range of work within the British Red Cross’s active front-line response to COVID-19 in Hampshire as a Refugee Support (RS) staff member, a Crisis Response South East tactical cell weekend coordinator, and as a local Emergency Response (ER), City of Sanctuary and Cycling UK volunteer.

● His excellent communication skills enable him to overcome the unique challenges associated with refugee support work, especially language barriers, isolation and distrust of authorities.

● He was a major leader of the newly organised direct and remote support for vulnerable migrants in Hampshire from the start of the COVID-19 crisis. As well as stakeholder and volunteer management, he mobilised and delivered food, medicine and other essentials to dozens of isolated, shielded households, as well as providing welfare checks.

● As the crisis developed, he has become established at all levels as the main point of expertise in this demanding delivery area, including assessing hardship needs and pioneering ways to safely distribute assistance. He advocates tirelessly for the often overlooked people under his care to ensure they get the assistance they need to survive.

Richard Ashman BEM

Southampton, Hampshire

Library Coordinator, City College, Southampton. For services to Further Education

● He is a librarian who strives to improve reading opportunities and levels of literacy across a range of social and economic backgrounds within an inner-city area.

● He is passionate about reading and the positive impact that books can have on students’ lives and never stops thinking about ways to engage students of all ages with reading, especially those who do not have books at home.

● He has transformed the library at City College into an engaging space for all students.

● To better support students he created read aloud sessions for one to one and small groups, with a special focus on helping those studying English as a Second Language (ESOL); he is dedicated to supporting both ESOL children and parents who are not only learning for themselves but helping them to be able to read to their own children who often speak more English than they do.

● He also devotes his spare time to helping the college and wider community through reading. He volunteers to run community reading groups at both the Central Library in Southampton and at the Art House which is a community art space and café within Southampton, and runs a well-attended monthly staff reading group to help embed reading into part of everyday life.

● Over the last five years he has been fostering children or young mothers and their children with the aim to help them have the best chance of staying together despite a less than ideal start.

Vivien Loveday BEM

Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire

For services to the community in Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire

● She has run the Bishops Waltham Gateway Club, which helps people with a learning disability take part in leisure, social and creative activities in the community, and provides opportunities for personal development, for 40 years.

● Over this period she has built and run a vibrant club which provides the highlight of the week for its members, from organising social activities, arts and crafts, and organising outings for members. It provides an opportunity for adults with a learning disability the chance to socially interact with friends in a warm friendly environment, as well as providing much needed respite for families and carers, and is funded by charitable donations.

● She is approachable to members, who feel comfortable going to her at any time with their concerns, and is attentive and understanding of their different individual needs, and she cultivates a friendly and welcoming atmosphere that enables members to feel comfortable and safe.

● She also carries out the essential administrative work associated with the club, including running committee meetings, paperwork and sourcing of volunteers and funding, all of which work is unpaid and voluntary.

Graham Street BEM

Portsmouth, Hampshire

Fundraiser, Charlie's Beach Hut. For charitable and voluntary service to Terminally Ill Children

● He has been a key part of the Charlie’s Beach Hut charity, which supports terminally ill children, their families and families of firefighters who have lost loved ones in the line of duty, since its inception in 2012, leading with many of the fundraising events as well as the marketing, including advertising, designing the charity logo and helping to coin the charity’s motto, “Find The Wonderful In Today”.

● Each year, he has organised, led and participated in a significant fundraiser and also planned other smaller fundraisers as opportunities arose.

● He acts as the Master of Ceremony for the annual Charlie’s Beach Hut Charity Dinner, hosting up to 250 Service guests, and in all he has helped to raise over £250,000 for the charity over the past six years.

● He has carried out this work while suffering with Bowel Cancer and in addition to his support of Charlie’s Beach House he has also fundraised for Bowel Cancer UK, which has supported him and his wife during his illness.

Patricia Tarry BEM

Hampshire

Volunteer, Girl Guides and Scouts. For services to Girlguiding

● She has volunteered weekly at the local lifesaving club, on Saturday evenings, for over 34 years, motivated by the belief that every child should be able to swim and save their own life.

● She has supported a weekly canoeing session through the local Scouts for more than 30 years giving innumerable young people the opportunity to experience the challenge of paddlesports regardless of whether their own leaders are able to provide it.

● She has been a member of Girlguiding since she joined as a seven-year old Brownie, and for more than 50 years she has given exemplary and diligent service both as a member and an adult leader at the local and regional level, including as District Commissioner, and now district treasurer for Southampton North District, as well as being a mentor for new leaders in the area undertaking the Leadership Qualification.

● For 46 years she ran the Sea Ranger unit nurturing and developing young women of our country, and used the skills that she developed as a Sea Ranger to train and assist other leaders as the County boating adviser for more than 10 years.

Robin Walton BEM

Hayling Island, Hampshire

Chair, Discover Hayling Project. For services to History and to the community in Hayling Island, Hampshire

● He has devoted the last 20 years to educating and increasing knowledge of our local history on Hayling Island as creator and chair of the Discover Hayling project.

● He has had trails built, monuments erected, and his books, booklets, videos, talks, presentations and exhibitions have inspired all ages to investigate and protect where we live, providing local people with a unique insight into the history of Hayling Island.

● He has worked with local charities, schools and volunteer groups to promote knowledge of our past and celebrate local heroes, and his work has drawn Royalty, politicians, film and TV stars, heads of the Armed Forces and wartime veterans to Hayling to share and celebrate his work.

● His achievements have appeared on local TV, in printed news media and is on display all over Hayling Island in the form of memorials, history trails and his books ‘ always on sale at local bookshops.

Ian Brown BEM

Swanage, Dorset

Volunteer station officer, H.M. Coastguard. For services to Voluntary Search and Rescue

● He has been a volunteer community Coastguard Station Officer since 1990, a role he performs in addition to his day-job as a trainer with Dorset Police Control Room.

● He has been an outstanding ambassador for Her Majesty’s Coastguard locally and has led the development and delivery of multi-agency exercises to test the readiness of local resilience forums.

● In the local Swanage community he is the driving force for his Team’s participation in the annual carnival, both in the parade and with an accident prevention stand, maintaining a close relationship with the local diver and fishing community, ensuring the crews have a local conduit through which to ask questions.

● This has resulted in many valuable assists during incidents where local boats have a better understanding of Coastguard procedures and, the dive boats in particular, have exercised with the Coastguard and developed model rescue plans.

● He promotes excellent partnerships and has been proactive with the local National Coastwatch Institute to encourage their volunteers to support lifesaving.

● He has led his team in some difficult search and rescue incidents, including the high profile Tilly Whim cave rescue attempt in 2014 and several searches in 2017 with high media attention focussed on Coastguard activities.

● In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led Coastguard Patrols designed to support beach safety through giving advice to the general public about social distancing and safe behaviours.

● He is a committee member for the Swanage Museum, helping to maintain and preserve historical locations and sites in and around the Swanage area for future generations.

● He has played a major part in the Swanage Community Defibrillator Partnership, being instrumental in at least 35 (and counting) public accessible defibs being sited locally.

Mr Mark Warn BEM

Wareham, Dorset

Wildlife Ranger, Forestry England. For services to Forestry

● His passion and commitment has, for the past 20 years, preserved and enhanced the value of the rare lowland heaths across the Purbecks of Dorset, for both people and nature.

● Typical of his commitment was his response to the devastating fire at Wareham Forest in May 2020. He was first to respond and selflessly spent 18 consecutive days on the fire site advising and supporting the Fire Service, often for 16 hours a day.

● His intimate knowledge of the forest, built from years of practical experience, directed action to save priority areas, with teams cutting fire breaks and providing the Incident Commander with vital information on the most valuable habitat areas to protect.

● He also continued to inspire and direct the volunteer effort to rescue reptiles from the fire site and move them to safety.

● His focus turned immediately to how to recover and redesign the forest. This vision will make it more resilient into the future, and again allow people and wildlife to continue to enjoy the area.

● He is now a leading expert in the management of the nation’s rare lowland heath/forest habitats, an expertise he has built through his own research and monitoring of wildlife.

● He embraces the opportunity to educate and inform visitors through events and through advice to partner organisations including the National Trust, RSPB and Natural England for a common goal in working for enhancing lowland heath for visitors and wildlife.

● He leads an active volunteer programme, often outside normal working hours, to support his species monitoring and habitat restoration work.

● He has also excelled in his network of contacts which provides an essential community watch that often allows him to intercept issues before they have a negative impact, which benefits wildlife and society alike.

Richard Curtis BEM

Basingstoke, Hamspshire

Landlord, the Portsmouth Arms, Basingstoke. For services to Charity and to the community in Hampshire during the Covid-19 Response

● He started a pub quiz on Facebook from the first day of lockdown, when he had to close his business when his pub, the Portsmouth Arms in Basingstoke, closed, with the intention to raise £150.00 for a local charity.

● He ran the quiz every night from March to July, and has continued to do so weekly since, bringing together people from around the country and internationally, particularly in the US, Canada, Australia, and helping to combat loneliness and isolation during the various periods of lockdown.

● He hosted a single quiz running for 35 hours in a world record attempt, raising over £21.5k in the process.

● In total the quiz has raised over £52,500 for various charities, with merchandise also being sold to generate further funds.