The Scottish Futures Trust is a limited company, operating as a non-departmental public body owned by Scottish Government, with our sponsor Minister being Shona Robison, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government.
Our Board
We are governed by an experienced Board, made up of a non-executive chair, non-executive directors and our chief executive, and are as follows:
- Joe Philipsz, chair
- Pauline Mills*
- Stella Matko*
- Alistair Brown - chair of the SFT Group Audit Committee
- Mark Dickson
- Nick Rowan*
- Stephen Slessor*
- Peter Reekie, Scottish Futures Trust’s chief executive
*Members of the SFT Group Audit Committee
Joe Philipsz
Chair
Joe Philipsz attended high school in Dunfermline before reading Jurisprudence at Oriel College, Oxford. He joined the Scottish Merchant Bank, Noble & Company, in Edinburgh in 1991 where he was involved in many infrastructure investments in Scotland and the UK more broadly. After his time at Noble & Company, he went on to lead major infrastructure equity investments in the UK and Europe.
Peter Reekie
Chief Executive
Peter has worked across the private and public sectors as a civil engineer, an infrastructure financier, and an advisor with one of the world’s leading professional services firms.
He joined SFT in 2008 when it was established by Scottish Government as a centre of infrastructure expertise and became its chief executive in 2018.
Peter leads SFT’s work encompassing long-term strategy development across infrastructure sectors, structuring and managing multi-billion-pound investment programmes and making the best use of existing assets in the transition to a net zero economy.
Peter is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Alistair Brown
Board Member and Chair of the SFT Group Audit Committee
Alistair Brown has over three decades experience in financial leadership within large and complex organisations delivering high level financial management, strategic advice, and oversight to advance organisational goals and enhancing fiscal accountability. His governance and strategic oversight has been built in a number of roles including Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee for The Avenues Group and as a Non-Executive Director for the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust.
Mark Dickson
Mark Dickson is an experienced Non-Executive Director and independent consultant supporting the delivery of infrastructure projects, and transformation of infrastructure delivery in the Water and Wastewater sector. Formerly Director of Capital Investment at Scottish Water he was accountable for the development of business plans and transformation plans to ensure delivery of £5 billion investment in maintenance and improvements to Scotland's water and wastewater infrastructure.
Stella Matko
Stella Matko is an experienced architect who has worked in the private, commercial and public sectors in excess of 30 years. She has spent the majority of her career working in the Higher Education sector and during that time has delivered in excess of £1billion of capital projects.
Stella currently holds the post of Director of Estates at the University of Strathclyde, which she has held for the past eleven years. She has been Chair of the Scottish Association of Directors of Estates from 2019 to 2022, and an executive member of the UK Association of Directors of Estates and was a Board Member of Fife College Project Board, guiding the delivery of the new £120M college building in Dunfermline.
Pauline Mills
Pauline Mills started her career at Kirkcaldy District Council in 1987 and joined Wimpey Homes in 1997, before moving to Miller Homes in 2004. She returned to Taylor Wimpey in 2008 to her current role of Land and Planning director. She is a chartered town planner and a member of the RTPI.
Nick Rowan
Nick Rowan has nearly 30 years’ experience in the construction industry and will bring knowledge and input from a tier one contracting perspective to the Scottish Futures Trust board. Nick currently holds the senior level position of Director of New Business at Balfour Beatty’s building and civil engineering business in Scotland.
Stephen Slessor
Stephen Slessor is an experienced CEO, director, and chartered surveyor with over 25 years’ experience in infrastructure delivery, strategic leadership, and policy-making across the UK. Currently CEO of RSE, Stephen leads one of the UK’s fastest-growing clean water technology businesses. Since taking the helm in 2024, he’s driven a bold strategy of growth through modular innovation, international expansion, and a focus on net zero delivery.
Stephen is a former President of the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors and Director of CECA Scotland. He also serves as a strategic advisor to OFWAT, the UK’s water regulator, as well as a member of the British Water board and plays an active role in shaping infrastructure strategy and innovation policy. At the heart of Stephen’s work is a belief that engineering should deliver meaningful impact providing communities with clean water, supporting sustainability, and enabling a new generation of talent in the sector.
The Board also oversees SFT investments (SFTi) which is a subsidiary of SFT and is our investment company. It manages the investments we have in the five hub companies, as well as in the 41 associated project companies and a number of affordable housing partnerships.
Board minutes are available from the Corporate Publications section of this website.
Board Gender Representation
The intention of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 is to help address the historic and persistent underrepresentation of women in public life.
Section 1 of the Act sets a “gender representation objective” that a board has 50% of non-executive members who are women. The papers linked below reflect the gender representation of the SFT and SFTi Boards.
Board Register of Interests
We regularly update and publish a Register of Interests of our Board members.
Framework Agreement with Scottish Government
In the 2022/23 financial year, we moved to a new framework agreement with Scottish Government that requires us to report under FReM (Scottish Government’s Financial Reporting Manual).
A Scottish Statutory Instrument allowing us to be audited by the Auditor General of Scotland was laid on 5 September 2022 and was considered by the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 5 October 2022.
It was signed by the Minister on 29 October and came into force on 30 October 2022. Our financial year ends on 31 March and our accounts are published by December of that year.
