ALREADY by the turn of the century Kamlesh Kumar Patel, not yet 40 years old, had been awarded an OBE, for ‘Services to Health Issues within Ethnic Minority Communities’. By that point, he had already crammed into his life more than most people could expect to achieve over a full span – he was already a professor (publishing extensively on subjects as diverse as drug misuse, mental health, public health and community engagement), Chair of a number of public sector bodies, and founder of a range of health and social care services.
Partly this work-rate was down to necessity and example. The man now titled Baron Patel of Bradford grew up in that town in economically marginal circumstances, living in a onebedroom house with no bathroom, with his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters. He was born in Nairobi, and the family had arrived in Britain from Kenya in the 1960s. Patel’s father had worked hard at two jobs, seven days a week, cleaning buses while also running a catering business.
Kamlesh Patel had a number of jobs in what he refers to as an “oddball” career beginning at the age of 16, whilst still at school. Over a period of 10 years, he worked in a variety of occupations and was a silver service waiter, a barman, life insurance seller and then a car salesman, an accounts clerk, a bookie, a special constable and an ambulanceman.
By his mid-20s he had started to volunteer in the area of social work and began to study for his professional qualifications. He got them in 1987 along with a diploma in social work, and then a position with Bradford Council. In 1989, he took up a position as a manager in the third sector, setting up unique and pioneering services for those misusing drugs or with poor mental health, whilst undertaking ground-breaking research, publishing and lecturing regularly at a number of universities. His research into Asian drug users in the late 1980s led to extensive media coverage.
“What I find unacceptable,” he said, “is pretending things are not happening, burying our heads in the sand and allowing the risks to pile up without doing anything about it”. In 1995, Patel had made the move to academia, lecturing and developing courses on social work and health policy, moving to management and establishing a research portfolio.
Remarkably, during the following six years he not only became a professor but also established and managed one of the largest research centres in the country, employing over 100 staff and raising in excess of £30 million in research grants and consultancy projects. Alongside his academic career he also contributed to a variety of government policies, including in 2005 being the architect of the government’s largest mental health programme, ‘Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health Care’; and in 2010 publishing
“The Patel Report” – a review into drug treatment in prisons, which made a number of ground-breaking recommendations accepted by the then-government. He developed his governance and business acumen, being appointed to prominent national boards and committees, including the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, the Home Office’s Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, the Healthcare Commission, the Care Quality Commission and the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. Patel was also made Chair of the Mental Health Act Commission and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
For 20 years, Lord Patel has undertaken a wide range of philanthropic, educational and health work across India – ensuring the UK-India business relationship flourishes through his role as Chair of the India Business Group. Ennobled in 2006, Lord Patel became at first a cross-bench peer but three years later joined the Labour party as a senior ministerial adviser to the Secretary of State in respect of the government’s PREVENT programme (Preventing Violent Extremism), before becoming a minister a year later, then sitting on the shadow front-bench from 2010-2012 in the upper house.
He told the GG2 Power List in 2017 that he wasn’t particularly partisan and had worked with both the right and left governments. In 2015, Lord Patel’s achievements were recognised at the GG2 Diversity Awards in the Man of the Year category. His cross-party credentials were burnished in March 2018 when Damian Hinds, the then-Secretary of State for Education in Theresa May’s administration, announced on World Social Work Day (March 20) that Lord Patel would take charge of a wholly new body that had been created to regulate social work.
Known as Social Work England, it would set professional, education and training standards for all social workers in the country. “I am honoured and excited to have been appointed the chair of Social Work England,” said Lord Patel. “I am passionate about our profession and truly believe social workers do and can help transform lives for the better. However, I know our profession currently faces unique pressures and challenges.”
He added that while he wanted to drive up standards he also wished to “work collaboratively with the profession to ensure that all standards are evidence-based, rooted in real experience and values fit for the 21st century.”
That left a window of a precious few months to attend to his other major commitments, not least of which involved his position as the first Asian to be appointed to the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2015 – as Senior Independent Non-Executive Director. Once there, Lord Patel had quickly discovered that despite the strength of the game within ethnic communities, the ECB had neither capitalised on nor worked out how to grow minority involvement: while a third of the game at grassroots level in the UK is played by Asians, only four per cent make it as professionals in the sport.
Determined to reverse the situation, Patel was responsible for driving the development of a major 2017 report into South Asian involvement in cricket. In addition to sitting on the boards of over 30 non-profit organisations, perhaps Lord Patel will even have some time left over for the British Board of Film Classification, to which he was appointed Vice President in May 2018. He certainly appears to have the energy for it.
