Hemant Patel appointed as Non-Executive Board Member to DCMS

As well as sitting on the Departmental Board, Hemant will chair the Department’s Audit and Risk Committee to provide constructive challenge and assurance on governance, risk management and control.

Hemant is currently Finance Director of Premier Inn.

He was born and educated in London before graduating from the University of Manchester having studied Physics with Astrophysics. He then moved into industry to train as a chartered management accountant.

He has worked at various multi-national companies including Mars Inc and SC Johnson in financial, commercial and marketing roles before moving with his family to Yorkshire to join Asda in 2003. At Asda, Hemant carried out various roles in finance including Commercial Finance Director and Retail Finance Director as well as running Asda’s own label business and leading business reinvention as Director of Strategy.

Hemant then moved on to be Director of Online at the financial service provider, Provident Financial plc, with responsibility for their online loans businesses. Latterly he was Finance Director of the Pub Co at Greene King plc, leading the finance function for the business’s 1,700 managed pubs.

He is currently Finance Director of Premier Inn & Restaurants at Whitbread plc, with financial responsibility for over 800 hotels and 400 restaurants across the UK and Germany. Hemant said: ‘I am both honoured and delighted to have been chosen to join DCMS as a Non-Exec Board Member and Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee. I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with a department with such a diverse portfolio and I very much look forward to contributing over my term.’

Until 2017, Hemant was chairman of Interplay Theatre, a Leeds based company using the arts to work with children in special schools nationally and socially excluded children locally. He was given the Arts and Business Individual of the Year award in 2007 for his work with this charity.

Hemant became a trustee of the Royal Armouries, the national museum of arms and armour, in July 2010, chairing the trading company as well as the audit committee, before becoming chair of the board in 2018.