CATEGORY
TELFORD’S FUTURE IN SAFE HANDS
If there’s one thing that can’t be denied it’s that David Sidaway is a determined man. To do a degree part-time, while working, and taking a pay cut to achieve your ambitions takes a special type of resolve.
Telford’s Southwater complex at night (above)
But that’s exactly what happened when David, now chief executive of Telford and Wrekin Council started his journey with the University of Wolverhampton, first by studying a HNC and then progressing onto the BSc Quantity Surveying. Even though David has worked for councils across three decades, he acknowledges he has an interest, and some would say flair, for the commercial world. And it is his talent for recognising and influencing that which has helped shape some of his key career successes. Telford and Wrekin Council is relatively new, in council terms, having been formed in 1998. With the confidence of success and his work with the commercial world ringing in his ears, in his mid-30s David knocked on the door of the then chief executive and said: “Please let me lead and deliver Southwater”. Telford needed to move the next level with a big part of that development being the need to deliver a heart to the centre of the town, connecting the significant retail, business and conference sector, the amazing town park and leisure facilities.
SUMMER 2021
LIFE MAGAZINE
15
