MASTER
CYNTHIA ISABEL MARGARET PECK
Cindy Peck is one of a select group of members of the Company who joined it by servitude, becoming a Freeman in 1973 and a Liveryman in 1986.
Cindy has had a distinguished career as a solicitor in the City of London specialising in commercial dispute resolution. She also has wide non executive experience. She is currently on a number of boards including Birkbeck College, University of London, the Architects Registration Board, Ofqual, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Perennial. She also undertakes fitness to practise work for the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service.
Cindy is married to Andrew Peck, who is a Freeman of the Company, and has two sons and a daughter.
Upper Warden
Alderman Robert Howard
Robert Howard has been a Liveryman since 1994. He joined the Court of Common Council of the City of London in 2011 as a Councilman, in the seat of Senior Past Master Christine Cohen, before joining the Court of Aldermen in 2015.
At the Corporation he has served on a number of committees including Open Spaces, Policy & Resources, Planning & Transportation and the Education Board. He is the Lead Member for Environmental Education and Chair of Governors of two schools: the City of London School for Girls and City Academy Shoreditch Park. He was a governor of Capel Manor College in Enfield for a decade.
He has worked in the City since 1993 at Charles Stanley & Co Limited, where he leads on regulatory policy and change.
Robert is married to Magdalen and has three daughters. They live in Hackney.
Renter Warden
David Balfour
David is a Chartered Accountant and spent most of his working life in the Dairy Industry. His last ten years were spent running The National Dairy Council, whose role was to promote and protect the Dairy Industry and its products, including acting for the whole dairy industry during the BSE crisis. He is perhaps the only Chartered Accountant to win an international marketing award.
He and Sue have lived in the same house in Gerrards Cross for nearly 50 years. He reckons that he has planted virtually everything in it. A keen golfer, he has been Captain, First Team Captain and Chairman of his golf club and organised the Livery’s annual golf event for 12 years.
He is the elder son of Past Master Dick Balfour, joining the Livery in 2005, with his younger brother, Michael, following a year later. His younger daughter, Catriona, is also a Liveryman; hopefully she will not be the last of the younger generation to be so.
Spadebearer
Robert (Bob) Ivison
Robert ‘Bob’ Ivison joined the Livery in 2004 and was elected onto Court in 2019, joining the Education Committee. He has been in the horticultural industry for over 50 years, starting as an apprentice in the Royal Parks, to studying at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, through parks and green space management positions to running his own consultancy business until ‘retiring’ in 2017.
In 2003 he was made a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and a Fellow of the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management. Currently he is on the Board of Trustees of the Canadian programme Communities in Bloom and is Chairman of their International Panel of Judges. He judges in North America,Asia, Europe, and the UK.
He is married to Teresa, and they spend as much time as possible with their children and grandchildren. In his spare time, he is Chairman of the Friends Group of his local park and a volunteer steward at the De Havilland Aircraft Museum.
Clerk
Ollie Finn
The Clerk acts as Chief Executive, and is responsible for managing the Company office and supporting the Master, Wardens and Court. The current Clerk, Ollie Finn, began working for the Gardeners' Company in June 2023.