The Locality board of trustees has announced the appointment of Tony Armstrong as the new chief executive of Locality.

Armstrong has a background as both a campaigner and a policy adviser, and has held a number of Government policy roles.

He joins Locality from his current post as chief executive at Living Streets.

He starts as Locality’s CEO on 21 July, taking the organisation into an exciting new phase.

As chief executive of Living Streets since 2008, the national charity for pedestrians, he has motivated people around the UK to take action to improve their local environments and local economies, campaigning for better quality streets, and has influenced policy to make walking safer and easier.

He has successfully built a strong organisation over the past six years which delivers national programmes and projects and runs successful high profile policy led campaigns.

Before joining the third sector, Armstrong was a civil servant for 9 years and held a number of senior policy adviser roles in Government.

From 2006-7, he led the Cross Government Obesity Programme, based at the Department of Health.

Prior to that, he worked primarily on neighbourhood regeneration and renewal and health improvement and was one of the original members of staff of the Government's Neighbourhood Renewal Unit from 2001.

In his time working on neighbourhood renewal, he was responsible for national work on neighbourhood management, and health inequalities and the development of Local Strategic Partnerships.

He also worked for a year as a secondee to support the New Deal for Communities programme in East Brighton.

Joanna Holmes, chair of Locality, said: “Tony has all the qualities we have been looking for in a new Chief Executive of Locality and we are so pleased that he will be joining us in July.

"Tony brings something new to the organisation as well as a solid grounding in the kind of work Locality and its members do. I really look forward to working with him and the rest of the team to take Locality into the next phase of our development, building on all our success to date.”

Tony Armstrong, CEO at Living Streets, said: “I’m delighted to be joining Locality in the summer - an organisation with such a proud history and a great future ahead of it.

"I’d like to thank Steve Wyler for his leadership in the creation of Locality and building such an excellent track record for the organisation.

"I’m passionate about communities achieving positive change and Locality’s members are doing exactly that, despite the challenges they face and the barriers placed before them.

"The organisation is ideally placed to use this vast wealth of experience and individual stories to shape how we as a society make decisions and shape our services.

"Community led and neighbourhood based solutions offer us a sustainable alternative to failed and inefficient models of service delivery and put people more in control over their lives.

"I’m looking forward to working with our members and anyone else who supports our work to help to make this case as compelling as we can so we can change the world one neighbourhood at a time.”

Steve Wyler, CEO at Locality, said: “When we created Locality three years ago we believed it would be possible, even in these difficult times, to create a hopeful platform for aspirational community organisations, to produce local solutions to some of the biggest problems the country faces.

"Driven by the energy and skill of our members, our Board, our staff, and our many allies, Locality has made a flying start. So it feels to me that this is the right time to hand over to Tony, who brings such an exceptional mix of experience and ability, and will, I have no doubt, raise the game still further.”

Steve Wyler announced his departure as chief executive in December 2013, he will be available during the transition as Tony Armstrong takes up his new role in July 2014.

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