Richard Mills has worked in virtually every field of environmental health at national policy level, now he's overseeing policy at the NSCA. He talked to Cathy Savage about his career

If you're looking for a breath of fresh air, the seaside isn't a bad place to go. And if you're looking for like-minded souls, then the place to go is Brighton, home of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection - one of the few national organisations that doesn't operate out of London. Brighton feels like a place where you can get things done - sufficiently out of the hubbub to offer some freedom and space beyond the London talking shops. Certainly it works for the NSCA, which is a prolific source of policy documents and guidelines, vocal on every issue, but has a staff of just 10 people at its main office.

That said, the location isn't entirely convenient for secretary general Richard Mills - he lives in Guildford - but this doesn't bother him at all. For one, other organisations being what they are, he's often up in the city to meet them, and secondly, his personal life just doesn't come into the equation. Quietly and politely spoken, Richard is relaxed and friendly but resolutely reserved. Throughout the discussion of his career he doesn't waver from his work - an attitude bred into him by 20 years in the civil service and one that is remarkable in the world he now operates in. But this attitude has a practical and meaningful result - Richard has been very conscious throughout his work that what matters most is not the person, or what he believes, but what he can deliver, what difference he can make. There is an absolute absence of hot air - of impassioned rhetoric - what Richard dwells on, time and again, is results.

Graduating from Oxford in the late 1960s with a degree in PPE, Richard started out in social research at the Institute of Community Studies in Bethnal Green, east London. These were formative years working for the inspirational Michael Young, who went on to found the Consumers' Association. "I was mainly looking at delinquency and drug use, which were being linked at the time, and also changing family and community patterns," he remembers. "It was a very interesting place to be and I loved the job."
But although it was a start, it wasn't a career, and in the mid-1970s, Richard left and went to work at the Greater London Council central policy unit, his first step on the ladder to policy-making.
"It wasn't as exciting as what I had been doing, but it was a very interesting introduction to the interface between research, policy and administration," he says. His stint at the GLC - just as Livingstone was beginning to make his mark - left a strong impression on him and he remains a strong supporter of local government. However, at the end of three years he was keen to move on to greater things, and signed up for the late entrant fast-stream into the civil service - where he stayed for the next 20 years.

He started off in regional policy at the DoE - a period which he pinpoints as possibly the least enjoyable of his career. "It was an abstract exercise on paper where levers for delivery weren't there," he recalls.
But from there on, things improved, with the wide scope of subjects the DoE had to offer. He moved on to housing policy - in particular housing associations - and played a key role in convincing the new Conservative government to support them.
"We persuaded the Government that they were a good thing and to let them prosper," he remembers proudly. "Despite the fact that they were publicly funded we convinced them to take a supportive attitude towards them, which was very satisfying, even if it didn't last forever."

CREATIVE TRAINING
His next move took him away from social policy and further into environmental work, as he took charge of water and the Control of Pollution Act. Then water privatisation began and he was made responsible for the water environment.
"Personally I wasn't in favour of privatisation," he says, when pushed for an opinion. "But I believe it was actually good for the water environment regime because it was necessary as part of the overall package to ensure that the systems were going to be effective. If it had still been in public hands it could have been left, but the standards imposed were much higher and the water companies' obligations in terms of conservation were much clearer."
In the mid-1980s Richard was promoted to assistant secretary and moved back to housing, as head of the housing management and estate action division.
"It was a wonderful job," he says. "I really enjoyed it, especially the estate work - the Government was confronting the enormous number of run-down estates and stock deterioration. We had inadequate resources to deal with the problems, but we had to find ways to improve the estates as living environments, which meant a lot of creative thinking, in partnership with other organisations.
"My earliest years had been spent not far removed from these areas, so I knew my way around.
"The problem is that you need a continuous effort to prevent inequalities from widening," he adds. "The last Conservative government didn't do all that much to extend inequalities, it was more the fact that not much was done to avoid them.
"In my view the real problem with a lot of these estates has been the withdrawal of investment for management - the concierge systems, security and maintenance of these estates," he claims.
In fact, the NSCA's latest policy springs from this agenda - putting forward the idea of community wardens as a way of helping to improve areas.

AGAINST THE TIDE
In 1990, Richard moved again with a leap into air, as head of the DoE's air quality division, at the time that integrated pollution control was being set up.
"In some ways it was disappointing by comparison, but it was still a good time to be there," he says. "We were working on the second sulphur protocol on acid deposition in Europe and there was increasing concern about the health effects of air quality - a 'something must be done' sort of feeling."
He was involved in developing the National Air Quality Strategy and remained while the division broadened to take in noise policy and the IPPC directive. Harking back to his focus on results, the air quality job gave Richard an important sense of achievement. "Under the air quality strategy we were able to give special new responsibilities to local government for the first time under Conservative rule for a long time. It was going against the tide a bit and I was glad to see that happen."

But after 20 years, Richard was ready for a change.
"I hadn't begun my career as a civil servant and never expected to finish that way, so when the opportunity came to do something different, I took it," he explains. "I'd had two very good jobs in the civil service and I was really due for something less exciting - I'd always managed to avoid local government finance and I didn't want to get involved in that, so it was time to go." Consequently, in 1997 he found himself in Brighton, as secretary general of the NSCA, a move which appealed to his pragmatic nature.
"This organisation is almost unique, for bringing together professionals, industry and members of the public," he says approvingly. "It works on building consensus which seemed crucial to me. I wouldn't have gone into a mainstream environmental NGO, or a narrowly professional body either. But the NSCA combines traditional professional strengths with industrial interests and community."
The culture shock wasn't what you might expect: "It wasn't that I wanted to come out and tell it like it was," he smiles. "Mostly the things I'd thought were right had been accepted; there was a broad consensus in the civil service and by and large government policy has gone the way the NSCA supports."
But there are benefits to being outside the circus, he admits. "It gives me more opportunity to be little bit controversial and raise longer term policies - to speculate at large - which civil servants can't do. Central government has become very lean, so often it doesn't have the capacity to do longer term thinking or play around with ideas."

The NSCA has been through a mild revolution since Richard started. The ruling structure has been reorganised into a council concerned with policy and a small and effective board of trustees - a change he describes as "invaluable" to the running of the organisation. Over the past three years, the team has widened its horizons, focused on sustainable development and made valuable contributions to local air quality management and the cleaner fuels debate. Richard is committed to integrated policies and planning and wants to see EHOs involved at every level. "EHOs should be at the forefront of this sort of work - they have so much to bring to that integrated function, but are they actually going to be there when the time comes?" he asks. "I have every confidence that they are."

Intrigued by the current old v new, enforcement v holistic arguments, Richard is keen to see a middle course emerge.
"Whatever the thinking about joined-up working, and whatever its importance, unless there is still a good, capable, effective approach to enforcement, systems won't deliver," he says. "When I worked in estates, I found that once you got past the usual activists, to the 90 per cent of the community, what they wanted was for the trouble-makers to be sorted out. Part of the problem now, I think, is filling the gap between the police and local authorities - on anti-social behaviour for example."

DELIVERING RESULTS
Expanding its remit into these areas, the NSCA has plenty to keep Richard occupied in the meantime. Not a stand-alone unit, it also organises the Cleaner Transport Forum, and the Environmental Analysis Co-operative and provides the secretariat for the international union of air pollution bodies, with Richard as director.
"We've got a big policy agenda here and we need to think of ways of getting that across into practical reality," he says. "I hope that over the next few years the NSCA will be as effective in noise and environmental management issues as it has been on air."
Certainly the organisation is going places. It's about to move buildings in Brighton, it has a one-man office in Glasgow and there are demands for an office in Liverpool.

It's this sense of movement, of achievement, which keeps Richard interested. "I like finding ways of delivering results," he explains. But when it comes to his future, Richard is characteristically taciturn. "I was in civil service for far too long to think 'what do I do next'," he explains. "Something always just happened."
And the rest of his life? He rattles off hobbies "the usual - family, travel…", and, when pushed, mentions a fascination for Tibetan culture, held since the uprising which took place while he was still a child. Then abruptly he stops. "It's not important," he says. "The civil service taught me that that kind of thing diminishes what you're trying to say."
First and foremost, an activist - in the truest sense.