Key Speakers
Simon Hake - Wardell Armstrong

Simon is Regional Director for Wardell Armstrong's West Midlands office. He is an Engineering Geologist with over 30 years experience in ground engineering and planning matters relating to all aspects of civil/ground engineering and minerals.   

Currently Simon is a board member of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce and a member of Industrial Advisory Boards of the University of Wolverhampton and Walsall College. Simon has also been a Director of the Black Country Consortium.
  
The area of the Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire is a relatively young geological feature. Formed during the last period of glaciation the geomorphological processes of river gorge formation continue to this day. As a result the gorge suffers from land instability. Simon Hake examined the past records of the area to develop an approach towards planning land use within the Ironbridge Gorge that was both affordable and recognised the inevitable priorities that needed to be taken.

An approach to the allocation of resources was developed, based upon work that was used in priority planning for the problems that limestone mining had posed elsewhere in the West Midlands region. Simon Hake will discuss the paper written by him and others for the Government examining the problems faced by the Ironbridge Gorge and will set out the methodology behind the approach taken to establish a priority driven resource allocation schedule.