Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex appoints four new Deputy Lieutenants

Mr Andrew Blackman, the Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex, made the announcement on Friday that he had appointed Mr Michael Bedingfield, Mr Tanjit Dosanjh, Mrs Lucinda Fraser and Professor Nick Webborn as Deputy Lieutenants.

Michael was born in Brighton and lives in the city centre, where he enjoys a view of the Royal Pavilion. He attended Hove County Grammar School, before starting his career at American Express in Brighton. Following his career in financial services, he moved his focus to travel and tourism, as marketing director with leading brands including P&O Cruises, VisitBritain and the Royal Automobile Club, and as chief executive of Tourism South East.

More recently, Michael has been involved with numerous trusteeships and has more than 20 years' experience in the arts, charity and museums sectors, including six years as a trustee of the Brighton Dome and Festival. Today, he is chairman of the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust and chairman of HMS Warrior 1860. Michael joined Martlets as a trustee and as chairman of the income generation committee in July 2019.

Tanjit is interested in the causes of crime because his father committed a serious offence when Tanjit was growing up, and served 14 years behind bars. Tanjit became a qualified optometrist in 2008 and, three years later, self-funded an optical lab inside HMP Standford Hill, where he volunteered for two years. Training prisoners first hand and listening to their stories gave Tanjit the passion he needed to see his vision through.

By 2015, Tanjit had been awarded more than £270,000 grant funding from The Monument Trust, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and The Triangle Trust, which he used to set up a properly resourced training programme for prisoners, The Prison Optician Trust.

From 2015-2019, the programme trained 60 prisoners and helped 45 get jobs with opticians, as optical advisers. In 2016, he secured contracts to supply optometry services into 30 prisons and now the trust now provides optometry into 68 prisons across England and Wales. These contracts mean he training programme is now financially self-sustaining.

Tanjit has now created a new brand, Liberty Glasses, which will create more jobs for prisoners within the organisation. The brand aims to show the wider public that by working together with former prisoners, it is possible to reduce reoffending while saving the taxpayer money. Liberty Glasses opened its first shop, on the University of Sussex campus, in 2022.

Lucinda moved to Mountfield in 1995, having previously spent a lot of her childhood in East Sussex, where her family has been established since 1860. Lucinda and Simon planted a ten-acre vineyard on the farm in 2012 and have a winery on site making sparkling wine. As well as running the wider estate, Lucinda does all the sales and marketing for the wine business.

In 1999 Lucinda formed a campaign organisation, Mountfield Heritage Group, to oppose the building of a county-wide waste incinerator in the High Weald AONB, a four-year campaign. She was also involved with fundraising for Rwanda Aid with a charity auction at this time. After the devastating fire at St Michael's Hospice in St Leonard’s in 2015, Lucinda sat on the Phoenix Appeal Fundraising Committee. In 2019, she joined the committee which successfully raised over a million Pounds for a new MRI Scanner at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings. Lucinda is a volunteer at Battle Food Bank, and Churchwarden at All Saints, Mountfield. She is High Sheriff in Nomination for East Sussex for 2024/25.

Nick is a world-leading expert in the area of Paralympic sport, and recently retired Clinical Professor of Sport and Exercise Medicine at the University of Brighton's School of Sport and Health Sciences. He continues clinical work at the Sportswise clinic in Eastbourne and his research interests through an Honorary Professorship at Loughborough University. Nick broke his neck playing rugby in 1981, when he was a doctor in the Royal Air Force and spent eight months at the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He later represented Great Britain in the World Team Cup for wheelchair tennis in 2005 and was national doubles champion.

Nick was Chief Medical Officer for the London 2012 Paralympics, and for the Invictus games in 2014. He helped develop the winning bid for the London 2012 games, and was then involved in the strategic planning and delivery of healthcare for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Nick was awarded an OBE in the 2016 Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours list for services to Paralympic Sports Medicine and the British Paralympic Association, and, in the 2022 New Years Honours List, a CBE for services to Sport and Sports Medicine.

In February 2017, Nick was elected chair of the British Paralympic Association, and, apart from the day-to-day work as chair between Paralympic Games, he will also attend future Paralympic Games as President/Head of Delegation for the British Paralympic team. He is a member of the UK Anti-Doping TUE Committee.