Bill Fennell – The Motor Ombudsman

Bill has worked in the motor industry for almost three decades, and has held senior roles at JLR, BMW and Rover, amongst other vehicle manufacturers. Bill has a first class reputation of enhancing consumer satisfaction, and his current position is the Managing Director and Chief Ombudsman of The Motor Ombudsman.

Iain Larkins – Radius Law

Iain founded Radius Law in 2013 and leads its automotive practice – one of the largest dedicated automotive law teams in the UK representing automotive manufacturers, retailers, parts suppliers and trade associations.Before establishing Radius, Iain was the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer for the Mercedes-Benz UK Group.

Sandra Martins – Radius Law

Sandra Martins is the head of the employment department at Radius Law. Sandra has particular experience advising businesses on IR35, TUPE, corporate transactions, business restructures, redundancies, executive exits and settlement negotiations.Sandra works closely with HR departments and senior management and provides practical legal guidance on all employment-related issues

Jerry Page – Radius Law

Jerry has worked in financial services for 35+ years, within the automotive-related field for 25+ years and in a compliance, risk and governance role for 10 years or so. He often compares compliance to visiting the dentist – nobody wants the pain or cost, but they do want to keep their teeth.Jerry’s five areas of interest are FCA compliance in consumer credit and general insurance; Enterprise Risk Management; KYC, money laundering and financial crime; data protection and corporate governance.

Richard Aucock, Auto Market Insight

Richard has been a Motoring journalist since 1993. He is also the Director of Motoring Research and the Chair of the Guild of Motoring Writers.

As Director of Motoring Research, he leads a specialist publisher serving a wide number of clients with bespoke motoring editorial, data and analysis.

Richard has experience across all forms of media and has worked in digital media from the beginning of his career.

Perran Moon – MP

Perran is the MP for the furthest southerly Labour constituency in the UK. One of 4 Cornish Labour MPs.

Perran has also been a director of a company which installs electric vehicle charging points and has regularly spoken at sustainable energy events and conferences.

He has liaised daily with local and national government, encouraging the rollout of electric charging infrastructure.

Ben Hargraves – Radius Law

Ben brings over 20 years’ experience in a number of sectors and across multiple countries around the world – most recently at the electric truck startup Volta Trucks in a pan-European role.

Gail Harrison – Sewells

Gail Harrison is MD & Owner of Sewells, Leadership and Culture Specialists who helps develop inspiring successful leaders, create positive cultures and embed sustainable performance improvements in organisations.

Gail is an extremely experienced presenter, consultant, facilitator, and coach across diverse industries with a background originally in the Travel and Legal Sector. Her passion lies in nurturing talent, fostering positive change, and building vibrant, high-performing teams.

Sewells focus is supporting individuals and organisations to lead with purpose, empowering organisations to align with their core values and actually live them while achieving their bottom-line results. Developing the right mindset and attitude to help individuals lead successfully so that they always create a positive legacy and culture.

Rob Elder, Bank of England

Rob joined the Bank of England in 1998, and for twelve years supported the Monetary Policy Committee as an economist and then senior manager.

Between 2010 and 2012 he represented the UK on the board of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. When he returned, he worked in the Bank of England’s press office, and most recently, supported their Financial Policy Committee by running a team monitoring developments in the UK banking sector. Rob became the Agent for Greater London in May 2018.

Zoë Warren, Philanthropy Lead, IJM UK

Zoë Warren is the Corporate Partnerships & Philanthropy Lead at International Justice Mission (IJM UK), leading a dynamic team working across the UK to engage corporations and individuals with IJM’s global work to stop slavery and violence. IJM works with local authorities to: bring people to safety; support survivors with trauma-informed care; hold perpetrators to account; and strengthen justice systems so that people are protected in the first place. IJM has seen slavery decrease by up to 86% in places where they work.

Vicky Read, CEO of Charge UK

Vicky was appointed CEO of ChargeUK, the voice of the UK’s EV charging infrastructure industry, in May 2024, after serving as the organisation’s inaugural Vice-Chair for Policy and Communications. With over 20 years of experience in policy and communications leadership, she has held key roles, including Head of Policy and Public Affairs at broadband infrastructure provider CityFibre, Head of Government Affairs at social network Bebo, and Executive Director of the Commercial Broadcasters Association. She has also advised organisations across the mobile, publishing, and sharing economy sectors.  Vicky joined the EV charging industry in 2021, working with Dutch charge point operator Fastned before joining UK-based Connected Kerb in 2023. Passionate about driving the growth of innovative industries, she is committed to scaling sustainable solutions and motivated by the urgent need to decarbonise our economy.

Marc Palmer, Head of Strategy & Insights

With over 20 years in the car industry, Marc has rich experience of buyers, their activities, motivations and experiences. From the brands they consider to how they choose to research and buy, he uses this data to help the auto sector and policy makers understand the car market. Marc has a particular focus on the digitalisation of car buying and the automotive industry, and on accelerating electric car adoption.

Melanie Wiseman, SMMT

Melanie is Head of Legal at The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Ltd, having moved into the automotive sector from City private practice more than 25 years ago. As well as providing internal legal services for SMMT and its subsidiaries, Melanie engages with the member in-house legal community to deliver horizon scanning insights and provide sector analysis and positions on the breadth of regulatory and legal/policy issues that affect the automotive supply chain in the UK. This entails working with members, stakeholders, government and regulators to highlight key legal and compliance issues – in an ever-changing environment encompassing new technologies, the post-Brexit landscape and the decarbonisation programme.

Peter Bury, PaoloAlto Networks

Peter Bury has over 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, working with customers in highly regulated industries to meet complex information security requirements.  His background includes positions in industry-leading companies from professional services and consultancy to education and advocacy. He is now the UK AI Domain Consultant at Palo Alto Networks, where he brings his experience to advise organisations on the secure adoption of AI technologies.

Lucy McCormick, Barrister, Henderson Chambers

Lucy McCormick is a commercial barrister at Henderson Chambers. She undertakes a variety of product liability and property damage work, and is particularly known for her expertise in relation to Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs). She also contributed to the 1st and 2nd editions of The Law and Artificial Intelligence (Sweet & Maxwell, 2020; 2024), having previously co-authored The Law and Autonomous Vehicles (Routledge, 2019). In 2023 Lucy won the CogX ‘Outstanding Achievements & Research’ award for her work on Tech Regulation.

Tim Wilson, Patent Attorney, Dehns

Tim works principally in the fields of computer systems, software, electronics, physics, signal processing, advanced medical technology and mechanical engineering. With a strong background in mathematics and physics, he is especially well equipped to handle highly-mathematical inventions in areas such as cryptography, statistics, artificial intelligence, data analysis and signal processing. In addition to drafting new patent applications, he has considerable experience in seeing patent applications through to grant before patent offices around the world, as well as advising on questions of infringement and validity. He also handles patent oppositions at the European Patent Office, and has been involved in patent litigation in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

Peter is counsel in King & Spalding’s London office, specialising in public international law, ESG, sanctions and business and human rights.  He has represented states and businesses in some of the leading cases in his field, in the UK and internationally.  In addition to his disputes practice, Peter also advises multinationals on human rights and environmental issues in their operations and supply chains and issues related to greenwashing.

Edward is an insolvency specialist with a busy practice of commercial and company litigation, insolvency and arbitration, often with an offshore or international element.

He regularly advises and appears on all matters of insolvency, advising and acting for petitioners, insolvency practitioners, creditors and debtors.

Notable recent insolvency cases include: Re Link Fund Solutions Limited (2024) (acting as sole counsel for several thousand retail investors opposing a scheme of arrangement for the collapsed Woodford Equity Income Fund); London Capital & Finance Plc & Ors (In Administration) v Michael Thomson & Ors (2023) (claims by administrators over alleged misappropriation of funds raised by the sale of mini-bonds to retail customers); Re Maud (2020) (opposing bankruptcy petition for alleged debt of £51 million presented by petitioners associated with a Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund and Robert Tchenguiz.

Zee graduated with a first class degree in commercial law in 2013. Since that date, has been working in the legal sector the UK and abroad. She has worked in a variety of legal sectors from the more academic probate disputes to the fast-paced, facts based criminal law. Zee’s main area of focus has been in commercial law – whether that be in real estate, franchising, finance, insurance or the technical difficulties of construction law.

She joined The Motor Ombudsman in 2023 as an Adjudicator. Zee was promoted to a Lead Adjudicator within a year and is now managing a team of 8. Zee has a deep interest in seeing how the law works in the real world and is enthusiastic about translating ‘legalese’ into plain English.