Dr Robina Shah will be officially installed as The High Sheriff of the region on 12 April in a ceremony at the Manchester University’s Whitworth Hall.
DEach year a parchment called the Lites is presented to Her Majesty by the Chancellor of the Duchy with the names of those recommended to become High Sheriffs for the ensuing year.
The Queen personally marks the selected name with a small hole made by a bodkin in a ceremony believed to date back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Lacking a pen, Elizabeth I decided to use her bodkin to mark each name instead.
Dr Shah is a Chartered Consultant Psychologist and Director of the University of Manchester’s Doubleday Centre for Patient Experience, a ground-breaking centre which involves patients and the public in the training of doctors.
Dr Shah, a graduate of the University is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine Open Section Council.
A Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant of Greater Manchester, she has also been Chair of Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and held regulatory and associate roles at the General Medical Council and Health Education England North West.
The academic is also passionate about football and is as an Independent Non-Executive Director at Manchester FA and the Football Association Women’s Football Board and Disability Football Committee.
The Office of High Sheriff is a year-long independent non-political Royal appointment, whose date back to Saxon times, when the ‘Shire Reeve’ was responsible to the king for the maintenance of law and order within the shire, or county, and for the collection and return of taxes due to the Crown.
The High Sheriffs central role is to support the Crown and the judiciary. They also support the police, emergency services, probation, prison services and voluntary sector organisations.
Dr Shah will also support charities and organisations working with young people and other vulnerable members of the community.
These include The University of Manchester scholarship programme for disadvantaged children called Access Manchester the Greater Manchester High Sheriff’s Police Trust and “We Love Manchester” Emergency Fund.
