Queen's Birthday Honours: Portsmouth worker who tackled fallout of six men joining Isis in Syria is made an MBE

Charlie Pericleous, 39, has been the city’s preventing violent extremism coordinator since 2015 at a time when authorities were catching up with the young men’s decision to joined the extreme terror organisation.

Ifthekar Jaman, from Somers Town, was among those who travelled to the war-torn country. Out of the six, five died and one man who returned was jailed under counter-terrorism laws.

Now Mr Pericleous has been named as an MBE recipient by the Queen for his service to the prevention of extremism and hate crime in the city.

He told The News: ‘I was just shocked really, it’s a total surprise – totally unexpected. I thought the letter was a council tax bill – it was a big shock.’

Mr Pericleous spent five years co-ordinating police responses to missing people, hate crime and supporting vulnerable adults at Hampshire police before joining Portsmouth City Council, where he has worked for 15 years.

In 2015 he was invited to join the EU's radicalisation awareness network and since then has travelled to Berlin, Vienna, and Barcelona to represent Portsmouth and share expertise. He also formed part of an EU delegation to Ankara, Turkey, in 2018 to discuss city responses to extremism.

Mr Pericleous has secured EU funding to begin a three-year project with European partners to combat violent extremism and has welcomed visits from UK government ministers and the United States Congress to discuss radicalisation.

As well as being a contributory author to published works on international territorial disputes and world political parties, Mr Pericleous is a NSPCC volunteer in the schools service, and has a passion for community engagement and environmental protection.