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Managing Director of a UK public policy consultancy. A leading expert on the UK business policy environment. Two decades professional experience across the government affairs and local economic development and research sectors.

Prior to Expert's current role, he was Director of Policy and Director of Research and Economics at the British Chambers of Commerce. In this role, he ran the UK’s largest private poll of business sentiment on the economy (the Quarterly Economic Survey). As an economist working across local economic development, he has overseen impact evaluations and appraisals of multi-million-dollar projects and programmes.

• Extensive record of achievement within public policy, local economic development and consultancy
• Confident public speaker and media spokesperson with a track record of performing to the highest standards in challenging environments such as parliamentary committee hearings and leading current affairs shows including Radio 4 Today and BBC2 Newsnight
• Proven abilities to influence decisions, develop positive relationships with stakeholders and manage complex consultation and strategy review exercises

Expert's areas of policy expertise include business growth, infrastructure, area-based investment and regeneration.

Accomplishments under employment of BCC:

Policy Advocacy and Partnership Working:
• Led a major national campaign of business support for delivering all phases of the HS2 high-speed rail project
• Co-led BCC’s People and Infrastructure campaign programmes
• Worked closely with media and parliamentary affairs teams, achieved growth in national media coverage for BCC as a lead spokesperson with sign-off responsibility for press releases, proactive and reactive outputs and policy consultation responses. Track record of quality advocacy in the highest-profile settings, including Parliamentary Committees, BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC2 Newsnight, R5L Wake-up To Money and many others.
• Business community representative for senior advisory bodies to government, including the SME Advisory Board (BEIS); European Structural & Investment Funds SME Subcommittee; EU Exit Employers’ Representative Group (Home Office); in addition to regular meetings with Ministers.
• Led development of BCC’s Business Manifestos – the statement of campaigning priorities for the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections.
• Achieved major policy wins in areas including local business taxation, infrastructure, Brexit readiness, planning reform, SME access to finance, local growth, devolution and public funding commitments.
• Greatly expanded BCC’s joint working with universities which now includes Capstone (policy assignments for LSE Masters students); Open World Research Initiative (foreign languages strand – MEITS – led by University of Cambridge); Middlesex University on labour market research.

Programme Management:
• Made successful bid for government funding to establish the national body for Local Enterprise Partnerships (The LEP Network) and acted as its project director until it became financially and operationally independent of BCC.
• Founded Fellows Programme which gave a formal structure and recognition to Chamber policy staff taking on national leadership roles – thereby increasing advocacy capacity and network buy-in without significant additional costs
• Co-founded a comparison website for businesses testing the market for banking services, and which assisted thousands of SMEs each month while it was live.

Service Transformation:
• Overhauled the UK’s largest, and longest-running private-sector survey of business sentiment (QES), taking it from a freely-provided service to a monetised one with growing revenues, while maintaining survey participation, its profile in the media and with policymakers.
• Successfully implemented new forecasting model, reducing costs and supplier risk while positioning BCC as the leading business voice on the economy.
• With the business development team, delivered integration of Chamber brand campaign and materials generated alongside research/ policy outputs
• Identified revenue opportunities for policy outputs and work with the business development team to convert into sponsorships and commercial opportunities