Lord Bamford to take his seat in the House of Lords

JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford will officially take his seat in the House of Lords next month

JCB chairman Lord Bamford will officially take his seat in the House of Lords on 7 November, the company announced this week.

Sir Anthony Bamford was made a Life Peer in August and will now be known as Lord Bamford after taking the formal title of Baron Bamford of Daylesford in the county of Gloucestershire, and of Wootton in the county of Staffordshire.

Daylesford is the hamlet in Gloucester where Lord and Lady Bamford live and farm, and Wootton is the area close to JCB’s World HQ in Staffordshire where Lord Bamford grew up and where JCB still have a farm.

Lord Bamford, who next year marks 50 years’ service with JCB, said: ‘Manufacturing and engineering are the areas I am focused on in my working life and I look forward to making a contribution in these important sectors when I take up my seat in the House of Lords.’

Lord Bamford started work at JCB’s World HQ in Rocester, Staffordshire, in 1964 after a two-year engineering apprenticeship at Massey Ferguson in France.

He became chairman and managing director of JCB at the end of 1975, succeeding his father, the late Joseph Cyril Bamford CBE, who founded the company on the day his son was born on 23 October 1945.

Under Lord Bamford’s leadership, JCB have grown to become one of the world’s largest and most successful construction equipment manufacturers.

The company has won more than 50 premier awards for exports, marketing, design, technology and its care for the environment, among them 27 Queen’s Awards for Technological and Export achievements.