date: Fri Oct 15 06:35:21 2004 from: Mike Hulme subject: Re: Rachel Warren etc to: "Warrilow, David (GA)" David, Just a quick note from me about Rachel - although I guess she has got back to you by now. Tyndall Centre would be happy to release Rachel for one more month, until the end of November 2004, to continue working p-t for Defra. Thereafter, we could not accommodate her absence without a more serious re-structuring of responsibilities in the Centre (which we wish to avoid for now). I hope this is useful for the moment. I think that the staff involved - Alex and Rachel - and the Centre as a whole has benefitted from the arrangements with Defra over the past 15 months and I am certainly sympathetic to looking at ways in the future of Tyndall Phase 2 of continuing such "job-shares". Indeed, we might even build-in a 50% post into Tyndall 2 on the assumption that the other 50% might be available to be employed by Defra. Regards, Mike At 21:23 03/10/2004 +0100, you wrote: Mike, just a brief note. As you probably know Rachel's secondment to Defra is due to end at the end of October. I have spoken to her about it and she is keen to extend that for another month at least and possibly up to Christmas. We would be delighted if she could stay for 1-2 months longer as she is doing good work and we have not yet advertised for a successor. I realise that this may create some problems for Tyndall but I would ask that you give serious consideration to 1-2 month extension - I think its to our mutual benefit that she gains more experience with the science - policy interface. Of course if you have an over-riding need for her to return we can understand and acccept that. She does not know that I am sending this but I have asked her to explore possibilities. I spoke to John S yesterday at the Cambridge. He is hoping to come to the Science-Policy Foum on the 11th Oct - he wants to talk to us about Defra requirements for Tyndall II, which we appreciate. Will you be able to come too - you are certainly welcome. I think it will be important for both of us (Defra and Tyndall) to build on current co-operation. Rachel tells me you are very busy with Tyndall II so if you can't make it we should arrange another time. Finally on the stabilisation contract. We had a round up meeting last Friday with Nick Brooks. It was OK but I have the distinct impression that Nick's heart is not in this and that not enough effort has been factored in to providing acceptable final reports. We sent comments on the background paper several weeks ago and nothing has been done. Nick is going to work with Rachel to finalise it but I just want to emphasise to you how important we view this contract. We plan to use it in a bilateral workshop with the Chinese and also use it as an input resource to our planned February meeting on Stabilisation. We will also want to use the research recommendations at the Feb meeting. The political stakes are high and a professional product is essential. Your help in this would be appreciated. Hope I will see you next week, or at some time soon, Best regards, David Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) This email and any attachments is intended for the named recipient only. If you have received it in error you have no authority to use, disclose, store or copy any of its contents and you should destroy it and inform the sender. Whilst this email and associated attachments will have been checked for known viruses whilst within Defra systems we can accept no responsibility once it has left our systems. Communications on Defra's computer systems may be monitored and/or recorded to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes.