Chief Executive, Deputy Chief Executive and Directors

Key responsibility
Officers run the council on a day-to-day basis and, as head of paid service, the Chief Executive is responsible for the strategic leadership of the organisation. He acts as an ambassador for the borough and the organisation, while ensuring the successful and effective delivery of all council services, ensuring that the council’s resources are deployed and managed effectively.

Biography
Russell O'Keefe was appointed as Chief Executive in October 2020 and took up the post on Monday 4 January 2021.

Russell was previously Executive Director of Place and Deputy Managing Director at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead since 2016. During this time, he was also Acting Managing Director for an interim period, assuming overall leadership of the council and working closely with councillors and external partners.

His previous roles at Norwich City Council included Executive Head of Strategy, People and Neighbourhoods and Head of Strategy and Programme Management. While in his role at Norwich Russell had a dual role as Interim Director at Great Yarmouth Borough Council with a primary focus to drive forward organisational improvement.

Key responsibility
Rebecca works with the Chief Executive to ensure the efficient and effective running and continuous improvement of the council to maximise the council’s positive impact on the borough and its communities. Rebecca supports the overall strategic leadership of the organisation and the development and delivery of the policy and budget framework.

Rebecca is also responsible for the council’s climate change and sustainability activities and leads the work to ensure the council achieves its ambitious climate change objectives.

Biography

Rebecca was appointed as the Deputy Chief Executive in 2022, having been Executive Director of Borough Services since February 2016. Rebecca has a degree in environmental science and geology from Portsmouth University. She started her career as a consultant working for WSP undertaking geotechnical and contamination ground investigations.

A subsequent career change into Local Government led Rebecca to work for over 10 years in and around London leading a range of front line services. This included roles at the London Boroughs of Croydon, Hackney and Southwark, as well as Three Rivers District Council. During her time at the London Borough of Hackney, Rebecca was responsible for leading the Council’s regulatory teams to support the delivery of the Olympic Park and 2012 Olympic Games.

Rebecca is passionate about delivering high quality services that meet the needs of customers with a strong background in managing large scale, customer facing services including waste management, planning and building control, housing and homelessness, parking, regulatory services and community safety.

Key responsibility
Leading the successful delivery of the council's front line services including:

• housing and homelessness
• planning and building control
• regulatory services including environmental health and licensing
• parking
• leisure, sport, recreation and wellbeing
• parks, open spaces and allotments
• street cleansing
• waste and recycling
• cemeteries
• communities and community safety
  

Biography

Fiona joined the council as Director of Resident Services in October 2023.

She has significant experience in senior leadership roles within local and central government, transforming, improving and collaborating to deliver high performing services to residents and communities across a range of front facing services.

Fiona was previously the Assistant Director of Place Services at the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and prior to that Deputy Director within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government responsible for homelessness policy and local delivery and then within the building safety programme.

Her local government career started at Kennet District Council in Wiltshire in the benefits service and then a move to London led to roles at Wandsworth Council and then the London Boroughs of Newham and Hackney, leading the delivery of a range of housing and housing related services.

She is passionate about high quality customer focussed services and has a strong track record of building and developing strong teams to deliver services that meet residents’ needs.

Key responsibility
Sarah is responsible for the management of the council’s land and property estate and a significant investment portfolio. She leads on driving the council’s development and regeneration activity across the borough and understanding the benefits needed from regeneration for all our customers and communities. Sarah ensures that all this activity is set against the priorities for the council to ensure appropriate, sustainable and supported change and that we are using our significant resources including property and land holdings, to invest in key infrastructure, housing and commercial opportunities to further improve the borough for our residents.

Sarah is responsible for the following areas of work:

• large scale regeneration projects including Basingstoke town centre, Basingstoke Leisure Park, the new leisure centre to replace the Aquadrome, and Basing View
• Manydown Garden Community
• estates and facility management
• property investment portfolio
• economic development, inward investment and place marketing
• arts, culture and events

Biography
Sarah started as Director of Regeneration at Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council in April 2023. She was previously Director of Regeneration at Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council.

Experienced in place making and regeneration with a solid foundation of land and property skills gained over 20 years of working in a local authority environment, Sarah has created regeneration and housing focused local authority trading companies.

With a background in contract and leisure management, she spent a few years managing the commercial property and contract interests at Bournemouth seafront. She successfully developed a pipeline of exciting, complex regeneration and commercial property projects, including being the responsible officer for a community focused Towns Fund regeneration programme and negotiating and acquiring a £43 million prime waterfront build to rent residential scheme in Poole.

Key responsibility
Katy is responsible for a directorate that works across the organisation with other services to improve the customer experience, how we perform, how we communicate and our digital services and IT infrastructure. This is increasingly important given the large number of residents who want to engage with us through the website and social media.

Katy is responsible for the following areas of work:

• business continuity
• communications and marketing
• customer services
• digital and information technology
• key performance indicators
• programme management and improvement

Biography

Katy has been at the council since December 2005. She was appointed as Director of Customers, Digital and Improvement in May 2024 after previously being Head of Customer Services Improvement and Performance.

Before joining the council Katy worked at The AA as the Service Delivery Manager in the Member Relations department, a multi-channel contact centre that handled complaints. A passion for creating an effective and efficient contact centre model is what initially attracted her to join the council, initially as a team leader in the contact centre. Over the years this grew to incorporate website management. During her time at the council, Katy has gained qualifications in change management, programme management, project management and business continuity.

Katy is experienced in identifying opportunities and implementing strategies to support effective transformative change. Her focus is particularly on customer service and experience, anticipating trends and harnessing technology to ensure intended strategic and operational outcomes. Throughout her career this has included expansion of the contact centre model and development of the website in online services, as well as encouraging collaboration and building effective teams.