Jill Barrow

Jill Helen Barrow (born 26 April 1951) is a British company director and former public administrator. She was the chief executive of Lincolnshire County Council from 1995 to 1997, and the first woman to be chief executive of any county council in England.

Early life Jill Helen Barrow was born in Hertfordshire She received a Certificate of Education from the University of Durham in 1972, and then completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at the Open University in 1980, before returning to Durham and completed a Master of Education (MEd) course in 1983. In January 1991, she took up the post of Deputy Director of Education at Essex County Council, There, she managed a department of 10,000 staff and a £314m budget (£665.8m in March 2025 prices), at a time when the county council were implementing changes to the Age of Transfer, which threatened the viability of several small village schools.

Lincolnshire County Council In 1995, Barrow was appointed Chief Executive of Lincolnshire County Council; she was the first woman to become the chief executive of a county council in England. She was appointed by the Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition that had controlled the county council since 1993.

The Conservatives took control of the county council in the 1997 local election. in a move which was reported to have "surprised" staff and many councillors. In a statement drafted jointly with the council, she said she was leaving to pursue consultancy work. According to Parker, who remained the leader of the Labour group on the council, the Conservative leadership, headed by Jim Speechley, began a "scorched earth" policy of removing coalition appointees from the council's executive. Auditors later found this payment to be unlawful, also commenting on the "absence of justification for payments of such magnitude". while his successor as leader, Ian Croft, was later found to have "breached the code of conduct for people in public office" over his relations with Barrow's successor as chief executive, David Bowles, who had been a whistleblower in the Speechley scandal.

Later career After Barrow left Lincolnshire CC, she worked as an associate fellow at Warwick University Business School. She was appointed Chief Executive of the South-West of England Regional Development Agency, She was a Board Member for England on the National-Lottery-funded New Opportunities Fund from 1999 to 2004. Barrow was then a director at the consultancy firm GatenbySanderson until 2006, when she took up a directorship at the leadership consultancy company Big Blue Experience.