Nusrat Ghani MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Department for Transport

Nusrat Ghani MP was appointed Parliamentary under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport and Assistant Government Whip on 9 January 2018. She was elected Conservative MP for Wealden in 2015.

Nusrat was the first woman in her family to be formally educated. She attended state comprehensive school before studying at Birmingham City University (BA Government and Politics) and Leeds University (MAInternational Relations).

Nusrat was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Office in 2017. She also served as the Chair of the Prime Minister's Apprenticeship Diversity Network.
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport

The minister is responsible for:
• accessibility across all transport modes
• buses and taxis
• high speed rail (HS2)
• maritime
• Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA)
• maritime security
• skills and apprenticeships
• the Year of Engineering

Professor David Begg (Chair)
Chief Executive
Transport Times

Prof David Begg is Chief Executive of Portobello Partnership Ltd which specialises in strategic advice to clients in the transport sector; publishes Transport Times magazine; and runs a series of transport best practice awards in conjunction with the Department for Transport, Transport Scotland and Transport for London.

He is a non-executive board member of Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd, a member of the Cubic Transportation Systems' Advisory Board and a non-executive chairman of EAMS Group.

From 1999 to 2005 he chaired the Government's Commission for Integrated Transport which was set up to advise the Government on transport policy and to monitor performance. He was a board member of Transport for London from 2000 to 2006 before joining Tube Lines as chairman (2006-2010). He was a non-executive director of the Strategic Rail Authority and before that British Rail. From 2005-2014 David was a Non-Executive Director of First Group Ltd.

Before moving to London he was Professor of Transport Policy at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. He is a visiting professor in Transport at Plymouth University. In the 1990s he was the political lead on transport on Lothian Region and then the City of Edinburgh councils.

Susan Aitken
Glasgow City Council Leader
Glasgow City Council

Susan Aitken became Leader of Glasgow City Council when the SNP became the largest party on the Council and formed a minority administration in May 2017. She was elected as a councillor for the Langside ward, where she lives, in 2012 and has been leader of the SNP group since 2014, having previously served as the group spokesperson on health and social care. She is the SNP's national Local Government Convener.

Before being elected, Susan worked in a variety of policy and research roles in the Scottish Parliament and the third sector, and as a freelance writer and editor specialising in health and social care policy. She grew up in Biggar in South Lanarkshire, moved to Glasgow aged 17 and is a graduate of both Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities.

Gary Bartlett
Chief Officer for Highways & Transportation
Leeds City Council

Gary joined Leeds City Council in November 2007 from Buckinghamshire County Council, having worked previously for Oxfordshire and Surrey County Councils. He is responsible for Highways and Transportation Services in Leeds which comprises a wide range of services including Transport Policy, Engineering Services, Urban Traffic Management Control, Transport Development, Traffic Engineering, Flood Risk Management, Bridges, Highways Maintenance and Network Management.

He is overseeing the delivery of a programme of civil engineering projects with a value of approaching £1bn over the next 10 years. He is leading on the £174m Leeds Public Transport Investment Programme and also works closely with colleagues from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, West Yorkshire Authorities and York City Council on the £1bn West Yorkshire Plus Transport Fund, which will see a step change in transport provision across the region. He is also overseeing the City Council's implementation of the innovative phase one £50m River Aire Flood Alleviation scheme and the development of phase two, which will see flood protection provided to the west of the City.

Major Projects recently delivered by the Service, in conjunction with partners, include Park and Ride schemes at Temple Green and Elland Road, infrastructure at Kirkstall Forge Railway Station, the 23km long City Connect Cycle Superhighway from East Leeds to Bradford, East Leeds Link Road, Inner Ring Road Stage 7, A65 Quality Bus Scheme and the Street Lighting PFI project. The Service has also facilitated the Tour de France Grand Depart and the Tour de Yorkshire through Leeds in recent years as well as the World Series Triathlon events.

David Brown
Chief Executive
Go-Ahead Group Plc

David Brown is Group Chief Executive of The Go-Ahead Group, one of the UK's leading public transport providers. The Group, which was established 30 years ago, now employs some 29,000 people and carries more than one billion passengers each year on its trains and buses. Go-Ahead's rail operation is the busiest in the UK, responsible for around 30% of all train passenger journeys. It is a leading bus operator in the UK, both in and outside London, with more than two million passenger journeys being made on its services every day. It operates buses in Singapore and has also won rail contracts in Germany and a bus contract in Ireland.

David has held a number of senior positions in the transport industry including Chief Executive of Go-Ahead's London Bus division and MD for Surface Transport at Transport for London. At TfL he had a diverse range of responsibilities including London Buses and the Red Route road network, congestion charging, and the introduction of the capital's cycle hire scheme. David is also a board member of the Rail Delivery Group.

Paul Buchanan
Partner
Volterra

Volterra Partner, Paul Buchanan, is a transport economist with some 30 years experience in the planning, economic and financial appraisal of a wide range of public and private sector transport investments.

Paul has specific expertise in the development of the economic case for public transport projects; he has developed the approach to valuing Wider Economic Benefits (WEBs) for Crossrail (2001-2004), subsequently incorporated into UK appraisal guidance.

With extensive Australian experience having worked on HSR, Melbourne Metro, Adelaide LRT, Adelaide development forecasting and Cross River Rail in Brisbane, and most recently with TfNSW on Parramatta LRT and Burwood LRT.

Paul sits on the High Speed 2 Economic Advisory Panel (since 2012) and the Crossrail 2 Expert Panel (since 2014).

Paul has a broad background in transport policy advice and the application of pricing and legislative tools to achieve particular financial and policy objectives; he has solid understanding of the information requirements of investors and financial institutions with respect to investments in transport projects.

Simon Craven
Special Advisor
Go-Ahead Group PLC

Simon Craven has made a career of helping companies through social and technological change, especially where public policy issues are part of the business environment. Since 2006 he has been part of the European transport industry, for the last three years as an advisor to Go-Ahead Group PLC on political, economic, social and technology factors affecting the future of the industry.

Before entering the transport world he was at the heart of BT's transformation strategy during the broadband and mobile internet revolutions. He has also helped companies in energy, retailing and financial services to make the most of technological and commercial innovation in delivering services for their customers.

Winfried Dölling
Director Retrofit and Aftermarket
Twintec Baumot Group

Mr. Dölling is the Manging Director of the Twintec Technologie GmbH in Königswinter, Germany, belonging to the Baumot Group, who is one of the world wide leading suppliers of exhaust aftertreatment products and provides its customers with an extensive range of these for retrofitting into buses, coaches, commercial vehicles, taxis, off-road vehicles as well as miscellaneous applications such as marine.

Before starting at Twintec in May 2016, Mr. Dölling as a graduated engineer already gained much experience in this sector at industry alike companies such as Eminox, Alantum or Siemens in different senior positions.

Today he is, besides working with the german bus industry, pushing forward the Baumot UK business, whose establishment has been awarded as preferred supplier at Transport for London. They have to retrofit about 5800 buses in the near future to meet the forthcoming ULEZs and improve air quality throughout the UK.

Robert Drewery
Commercial Director
Optare

Robert has over 15 years of national and international sales and marketing experience gained within the bus and commercial vehicle industries at a senior level.

Robert's career in the commercial vehicle and bus industry started with Leyland Daf where he gained extensive experience in both sales and aftersales, followed by the role of business development director of the truck maintenance company, Pullman Fleet Services.
More recently Robert led the Wrightbus sales team to win a number of major UK and international contracts supplying Wrightbus products. Robert also oversaw the introduction and support of the New Routemaster.

Over the last 18 months at Optare, Robert has been focused on engaging with operators across the UK to the deliver an extensive demonstration programme for the new double deck product and extended range electric buses. He has also used his international sales experience to help expand Optare's presence in overseas markets, in particular Australia and South East Asia.

Andy Eastlake
Managing Director
LowCVP

Andy Eastlake was appointed as the LowCVP's Managing Director in April 2012, after serving both on the board and as chair of the members council for many years. Andy has a strong background in vehicle engineering, specialising in powertrain developments, fuel economy and emission. He was formerly Group Head of Commercial and Projects at Millbrook Proving Ground where he led the work on powertrain test and development programmes and alternative fuels for a variety of global OEM customers. As head of laboratories Andy was responsible for all technical aspects of the Millbrook business and for government and European legislative relations. He joined Millbrook after a year's training with Vauxhall Motors by whom he was sponsored to study for a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Southampton University. He is also a Board member of CENEX the Centre of Excellence for Low Carbon & Fuel Cell Technologies and a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Giles Fearnley
Managing Director – UK Bus
FirstGroup Plc

Giles Fearnley has been Managing Director of First Group's UK Bus Division since February 2011.

In 1991 he led a management buy-out of Blazefield Holdings which operated bus networks principally across Yorkshire and Lancashire. He remained as Chief Executive for two years following the group's sale to Transdev plc in 2006. In the mid 90's Giles took a "sabbatical" from the bus industry into rail and was one of the founders of Prism Rail plc, which operated four UK passenger rail franchises. He was appointed as Chief Executive and led the Group prior to the sale in 2000 to National Express. He then served as Chairman of Grand Central, the open access rail operator, prior to its sale to BB in 2011.

At various times, Giles has served as Chairman of the Association of Train Operating Companies and President and then Chairman until 2011, of the Confederation of Passenger Transport.

Pete Ferguson
CEO
Prospective

As CEO of Prospective, Pete leads a team of data scientists, software engineers and transport experts from UCL, Cambridge and the Alan Turing Institute in the development of a cloud platform for urban planning. Backed by the UK government following a major national competition, the company has developed a continuously up to date picture of the UK's transport network, development supply and land use activity and the tools to quickly process and analyse this data at scale. The platform has already been used to help major government, real estate and transport organisations to quickly test many alternative planning policies, development plans and operational strategies in the early stages of the design process.

Prospective's founding team includes urban analytics pioneers Professor Sir Alan Wilson (CEO of the Alan Turing Institute) and Professor Mike Batty (UCL Professor of Planning) and experts in systems modelling, Machine Learning and the use of cloud technologies for geospatial analysis.

Pete has been working across the transport, real estate and planning sectors for 12 years with a focus on the development and application of novel data analytics and modelling tools.
He is an Honorary Research Associate at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at UCL where he is undertaking doctoral research in network science and where he has published widely on the impacts of transport network design on energy consumption and carbon emissions in cities.

Claire Haigh
Chief Executive
Greener Journeys

Claire Haigh is Chief Executive of Greener Journeys, a coalition of the UK's major public transport groups and other supporters committed to encouraging people to make more sustainable travel choices. Her other current roles include: Director of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, and Advisor on the Board of Transport for Greater Manchester. She is also a regular columnist for the monthly magazine Transport Times.

Claire was previously Project Director for Journey Solutions, where she was responsible for the creation and implementation of PLUSBUS – the national integrated bus/rail ticket. Other previous roles include Sales Director for the Chameleon Press printing company. She read History and German at Magdalen College Oxford, and began her career in advertising working as an Account Executive for DDB. Her interests include her work as an artist, for which she has had several solo exhibitions in central London. She also has links with a number of charitable organisations including CRISIS, for which she is a Community Ambassador.

She is Chartered Fellow (FCILT) of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and a Fellow of (FRSA) of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers & Commerce.

Cllr Roger Lawrence
Leader
Wolverhampton City Council

Roger is the Leader of the City of Wolverhampton Council and the Wolverhampton Labour Group. Roger was first elected in 1983. As Leader Roger is also the Chair of the Cabinet, the decision making body at the Council.

Prior to being elected to St Peter's ward Roger worked for Sandwell MBC and as a researcher for a number of Universities. He was educated at Millbrook School, New York and St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

He has an MA in Community Studies from Keele, and an Msc in Policy Studies from Bristol. He has a D Soc Sci from the University of Bristol for a study of Cross Border Collaboration in Central and Eastern Europe.

Roger cites local democracy, urban regeneration, regional development, organisational and structural change and social inclusion as his main political interests. He has published on European Structural Funds, the Voluntary Sector, and Citizenship.

Roger is the transport lead for the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).

Roger is supported by the Co-operative Party and supports co-operative principles.

Lilli Matson
Director of Transport Strategy
Transport for London

As Transport for London's Director of Transport Strategy, I lead TfL's strategy and planning of surface transport priorities and projects – with a focus on managing freight and transport demand, planning for bus priority across London, promoting walking, cycling, accessible public transport and improving road safety. I have worked with TfL since 2006.

I was a member of the UK Government's Commission for Integrated Transport 1998-2004 and ran my own transport consultancy for five years, leading major projects for a range of clients including the Department for Transport, DCLG, Government agencies, local authorities and the voluntary sector.

Prior to working as a consultant, I led UK countryside group Campaign for the Protection of Rural England's transport work for seven years, influencing national transport policy during this time.

Kevin O'Connor
Managing Director
Arriva UK Bus

Arriva is proud to support the Transport Knowledge Hub, which will provide a useful toolbox for LEPs and other commissioners to make the transport investments required to drive local economic growth. We share with LEPs a mutual goal of boosting economies and strengthening communities, and public transport has an important role to play achieving these objectives.

Arriva works closely with employers, making adjustments to routes and timetables to fit their needs. Last year Arriva undertook a significant market research project with existing and non-users of bus services, which underlined the need to make bus travel more convenient. In response, Arriva is making journeys simpler, easier and orientated around what customers want. For example, we are piloting a new demand responsive service, ArrivaClick, in Kent where customers can book a journey using their phones and be picked up at the nearest corner – a "virtual bus stop".

Reducing journey times could significantly support local communities and tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the UK economy – the need to boost productivity. Bus is a cost-effective and flexible solution to address this challenge. With each double-decker potentially taking 75 cars off the road, buses can help to ease the pressure on the road network and alleviate congestion.

We need to work in partnership, making journeys even more convenient and supporting local economies. The Transport Knowledge Hub is a great platform and we hope these practical resources will play a useful role supporting collaboration and conversation, helping to achieve these important objectives.

Anthony Smith (Chair)
Chief Executive
Transport Focus

Anthony Smith is Chief Executive of Transport Focus, the independent consumer watchdog for Britain's passengers.

Having qualified as a solicitor, Anthony worked for five years as principal consumer lawyer for the Consumers' Association, publishers of Which? This was followed by a year as the legal consultant for Consumers International, a worldwide federation of consumer groups.

Prior to joining Transport Focus, Anthony was deputy and acting director of ICSTIS, the regulator of premium rate telephone services.