Jennifer Page (Millennium Dome)
Encyclopedia
Jennifer Anne "Jennie" Page, CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born 12 November 1944) was Chief Executive of the London Millennium Dome
Millennium Dome
The Millennium Dome, colloquially referred to simply as The Dome or even The O2 Arena, is the original name of a large dome-shaped building, originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium...

 project from 1 March 1995 until she was fired after a flawed opening night and poor early attendance at the start of 2000.

Education

Page attended Barr's Hill Grammar School for Girls
Barr's Hill School
Barr's Hill School and Community College is a comprehensive secondary school in Radford, Coventry, England.-Admissions:Barr's Hill is situated on a spacious green field site just north of Coventry city centre on the B4098 , south of the Coventry-Nuneaton Line. The site of the former Jaguar factory...

. She was later educated at Royal Holloway, University of London
Royal Holloway, University of London
Royal Holloway, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries...

 where, as an undergraduate she had been awarded the George Smith Studentship and where she obtained a First-Class Honours
British undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...

 BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 degree
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...

 in English in 1966 followed by a Driver postgraduate scholarship.

Early career

Prior to her appointment to the Dome project, she was Chief Executive of English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 from 1989 to 1995, having been recruited by the then chairman, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu
Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu
Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu is a British Conservative politician well known in Britain for founding the National Motor Museum, as well as for a pivotal cause célèbre in British gay history, his 1954 conviction and imprisonment for homosexual sex, a...

 (chairman 1984–1992). She later worked for chairman Jocelyn Stevens
Jocelyn Stevens
Sir Jocelyn Stevens, CVO is the former publisher of Queen Magazine; a financier of the first British pirate radio station Radio Caroline; newspaper editor for major London dailies and former chairman of English Heritage.-Career:...

. On her appointment to the Millennium Commission, Stephen Dorrell said:
"The work of the Commission will leave a permanent mark of the face of the country and the job of the Chief Executive will be crucial to the Commission's success. Jennie Page is the right person for the job and we are delighted that she is going to join us."
Jocelyn Stevens said:
"I have been privileged to work very closely with Jennie since I have been Chairman of English Heritage. She has been my chief collaborator and strong support through a challenging period. I will miss her and her intuitive wisdom very much indeed and I wish her the same success in her new job that she has achieved at English Heritage. The Millennium Commission is singularly fortunate in obtaining Jennie's extraordinary combination of knowledge and management skills."


Before the appointments at English Heritage and the Dome project she was a civil servant in the Departments of the Environment and Transport, Britoil (formerly BNOC)
Britoil
Britoil was originally a privatised British oil company operating in the North Sea. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.-History:...

, London Docklands Development Corporation
London Docklands Development Corporation
The London Docklands Development Corporation was a quango agency set up by the UK Government in 1981 to regenerate the depressed Docklands area of east London. During its eighteen-year existence it was responsible for regenerating an area of in the London Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and...

, and Pallas Group. She was also a non-executive director of Railtrack
Railtrack
Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from its formation in April 1994 until 2002...

 Group plc, a part-time appointment earning her £26,000 per year. Railtrack Group was placed into members' voluntary liquidation as RT Group on 18 October 2002.

She was also a non-executive director of The Equitable Life Assurance Society which almost collapsed financially in the millennium year. The Society issued claims for negligence against nine former directors, including Page, but in 2005 conceded total defeat in a four-year £3.2bn legal action to obtain compensation for policyholders. £10.2m was paid to the former directors to cover much of their legal expenses with Page paid just over £3m.

Position as Dome chief executive

Page was headhunted for the job by the then Heritage Secretary, Stephen Dorrell
Stephen Dorrell
Stephen James Dorrell is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister John Major as Secretary of State for National Heritage and Secretary of State for Health...

, according to The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

. Page had previously worked for the London Docklands Development Corporation
London Docklands Development Corporation
The London Docklands Development Corporation was a quango agency set up by the UK Government in 1981 to regenerate the depressed Docklands area of east London. During its eighteen-year existence it was responsible for regenerating an area of in the London Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and...

 and had a reputation for a hardheaded style of management. Cracks developing behind the scenes began to show in January 1998 when Stephen Bayley
Stephen Bayley
Stephen Paul Bayley is a British design critic, cultural critic and author.-Childhood and Education:Bayley spent his childhood years in Liverpool, attending Booker Avenue County Primary School and Quarry Bank High school . The latter was also attended at an earlier date by the late Beatle John...

, creative director of the project, resigned. He described Government Minister Peter Mandelson
Peter Mandelson
Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, PC is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool from 1992 to 2004, served in a number of Cabinet positions under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and was a European Commissioner...

, whose project it had become, as a dictator reminiscent of: "an East German Stalinist".

Page was sacked as Chief Executive on 5 February 2000. She had come under pressure after an opening night fiasco on 31 December 1999, followed by poor attendance in January 2000 and a revolt by sponsors. She was replaced by an unknown 34 year old Frenchman, Pierre-Yves Gerbeau
Pierre-Yves Gerbeau
Pierre-Yves Gerbeau is a French businessman, based in the United Kingdom.-Early life:Gerbeau was born into an affluent Parisian family, where his parents ran an office supply company...

, known as "P-Y" and also nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....

d "the Gerbil
Gerbil
A gerbil is a small mammal of the order Rodentia. Once known simply as "desert rats", the gerbil subfamily includes about 110 species of African, Indian, and Asian rodents, including sand rats and jirds, all of which are adapted to arid habitats...

" by the popular press, who had previously worked for the Disneyland Paris theme park. He was not thought particularly senior in the Disney organisation.

During her time at the Dome, and with compensation for her early departure, she was rumored to have received a salary of £500,000. Later, in June 2000, Page gave evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport. She stated that "[t]he Dome had been seen by ministers and the public as a political project almost since its inception". Page claimed that she had asked ministers to step back from the project to calm the controversy surrounding it. In what was seen as a reference to the close interest in the Dome from Peter Mandelson
Peter Mandelson
Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, PC is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool from 1992 to 2004, served in a number of Cabinet positions under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and was a European Commissioner...

, the former so-called "Minister for the Dome", and his successor Lord Falconer of Thoroton, Page told the committee: "I made several attempts to persuade ministers that standing back from the Dome would be good for them as well as good for the Dome". Page added to her criticism of ministers by insisting that the unexpected decision by the Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

 Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

 to invite one million schoolchildren to the Dome for free had had a significant impact on its income. It meant many parents would no longer pay to visit with their families, and forced the building of extra facilities for the large school parties. A decision to ban visitors arriving by car also cut the public's level of interest.

Post-Dome career

In 2001 Page married Jeremy David Orme, an accountant. In 2006, she was appointed vice-chairman, of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, a statutory body, chaired by Frank Field
Frank Field (UK politician)
Frank Ernest Field DL is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead since 1979. From 1997 to 1998, he served as the Minister of Welfare Reform, before leaving the Government, following differences with Prime Minister Tony Blair...

 MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

, pledged to: "[p]romote the care and conservation of the Cathedral
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

 churches of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

"
.
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