Meet our new president

‘I very much look forward to working with and supporting the Kent team in these challenging times’

We are delighted to announce that Jonathan Tennant has agreed to become CPRE Kent president – and here he is to introduce himself:
“I am a retired rural practice chartered surveyor and have spent most of my working life as a land agent in Kent.
“After completing the estate management course at Cirencester, I started working with Cluttons in 1982, initially in their Bath and Wells offices but latterly in Canterbury. For more than 20 years, I was involved in all aspects of the management of privately- and institutionally-owned agricultural estates.
“However, soon after moving to Canterbury, one of my first jobs was for a Kent water company and from this grew my interest in the rather niche sphere of acting for utility companies on projects where they required expertise in the acquisition of land and rights over land.
“This work developed to the point where I and two other Cluttons employees decided we should take the plunge and establish our own company specialising in this area of work (deciding from the outset that we would act only for utility companies and never against them!).
“As a result, the first half of my career had its roots in rural estate management, while the second half drew me into compulsory purchase, planning and a wide range of compensation work. Needless to say, promoting utility schemes across private land is seldom an easy ride and inevitably negotiations with landowners soon became part of my stock in trade!
“I have had a long association with King’s Canterbury, where for a time I sat alongside CPRE Kent chairman Ben Moorhead as a governor. I remain a retired member of the Kent Valuers Club (a branch of The Central Association of Agricultural Valuers), which usefully keeps me in touch with the commercial goings-on in the countryside.
“I have lived all my life in the country and grew up in east Devon. Despite having now lived in Kent for 35 years, I am of course still adding to my knowledge of the countryside – particularly songbirds, butterflies and trees, in which I have a strong interest. I enjoy writing poetry (I am a member of the Betjeman Society) and watercolour landscape painting. Having now retired, I am able to enjoy these things all the more! My wife Cootchy and I have two grown-up children and a grandson.
“By force of circumstance, since retirement, I find myself being drawn back into my old ‘utility world’ on account of two huge solar-farm proposals in and around my home village of Aldington. While, annoyingly, this work takes up valuable retirement time, I have to concede that it also keeps those little grey cells ticking over!
“I am both delighted and honoured to be taking on the role of CPRE Kent’s new president. I very much look forward to working with and supporting the Kent team in these challenging times while at the same time getting those grey cells working harder still!”