Our experts
Roy Hancock
Roy has spent most of his working life in senior marketing and general management positions for large International FMCG companies, quoted on the FT100 stock exchange. Activities involved product and new product management, market management, territorial and regional management across a wide geographical spread. As such Roy has lived for periods of time in a number of overseas locations as diverse as New York and Colombo, Sri Lanka. His areas of involvement included North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Middle East, West and North Africa, Indian Sub Continent and parts of the Far East. He has gradually become interested in self build concepts and the benefits that ecological materials can bring.
Denis Rawlings
Denis has an almost evangelical passion for gardens, landscapes and sustainable building. He believes much more could and should be done to improve the design of new homes and that house builders should be much more creative in their approach. “I believe homes should be designed and built for the people that live in them not simply to build the profits of house builders and their shareholders”. He advocates a more rounded approach to house building that takes advantage of the latest sustainable building technologies while enhancing the environment with well designed gardens and landscapes. Denis launched the New Homes Garden Awards in 2004, has been a publisher and written for a number of magazines.
David Hoppit
David comes from three generations of Essex house builders and has property in his blood. Graduating from local and regional newspapers he eventually became property editor for the Daily Telegraph and has since written for many national newspapers and property and gardening magazines. David has a tremendous interest in the environment and its relationship with housing development. He has campaigned for many years for the use of more sustainable building and building practices and as such has served on many property awards judging panels.
Michael Parker
Michael has been in the house building industry man and boy for over 40 years. He has built a house from foundations to roof so knows the business inside out. He has built up an enviable reputation for quality and specialises in building award winning thatched cottages in his favourite county of Dorset. He is an honorary member of the Master Thatcher’s Association and also runs a successful timber frame construction business. As well as writing for a national newspaper he is currently building an eco show house and a sustainable building education centre.
Michael Mapp
Michael has spent over 30 years of his working life in advertising and marketing. He learnt his craft with award winning national agencies as a media planner and buyer then moved into sales promotion with a major marketing agency. He has extensive experience of the property market both here and abroad and gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of the self-build industry during his tenure as Marketing Manager of Custom Homes, now one of the leading timber frame manufacturers in Britain. Along the way he has built show houses for major exhibitions and developed a passion for sustainable building methods and more imaginative building design.