Our members

Zoe McLeod

Zoe is a leading consumer advocate with more than 20 years’ experience championing customer and community concerns. This includes: the energy watchdog, Citizens Advice and its predecessor Consumer Focus; Friends of the Earth; the fuel poverty charity National Energy Action and as an elected Councillor and Assistant Cabinet Member for Young People and Youth Services.

Her background also includes leading on the consumer vulnerability strategy at Ofgem, and as an expert Advisor to Ofwat’s Water 2020 Panel. Currently Zoe is the Chair of South East Water’s Customer Challenge Group, a member of National Grid’s User Group, and an Associate with the charity Sustainability First with a particular focus on innovation, and improving customer service and quality of life for those with additional needs and on low incomes. She is also a lay member on the Bar Standards Board.

Helen Fleming

Helen spent over 20 years as a civil servant working in a wide variety of policy-making roles in various government departments, with close involvement with the evolution of energy policy as key decisions were made on how energy markets should manage the affordability, environmental and security of supply “trilemma”. This included decisions on the use of subsidies to deliver energy market change and how to support vulnerable customers. She has also spent a year at the Competition and Markets Authority leading a research report on the use of consumer data.

For the past three years she has been the director of corporate affairs at the Data and Communications Company - with responsibility for its price control, its licence compliance and its stakeholder relationships, in particular with Ofgem.  She is now an independent consultant.

Mike Foster

Mike is CEO of Energy and Utilities Alliance, a not-for-profit trade association based in the West Midlands. He holds a degree in economics, a post-graduate certificate in education and is a Chartered Management Accountant. Having started work in the car industry, he taught accountancy, economics and statistics for six years before becoming MP for Worcester (1997-2010). He served as a minister for four years, under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, latterly as Minister for International Development. Before heading up EUA, he was head of communications at the international charity WaterAid.

Mike is non-exec chair of Affordable Warmth Solutions, a community interest company that delivers Cadent’s fuel poor network extension programme and he chairs Cadent’s stakeholder engagement panel.

Simon Griew

Simon has over 30 years’ experience in the energy industry, in a broad range of strategic, commercial and regulatory roles.  In the 1990’s, Simon developed and negotiated sections of the original GB gas Network Code and led Transco’s department responsible for setting gas transportation charges. He subsequently undertook the early preparatory work for the 2002 price control review and negotiated its first set of system operator incentives.

At National Grid he led on security of supply and transforming the company’s approach to major infrastructure planning.

An independent consultant since 2013, his first assignment was interim CEO at the Institution of Gas Engineers & Managers, where he now chairs the Finance Committee. He has subsequently undertaken a wide range of projects, in which gas market liberalisation and future energy systems have been recurring themes.

John Kolm-Murray

John has worked on fuel poverty in Glasgow and London and is currently fuel poverty lead at the Greater London Authority. In 2010 he established the Seasonal Health Interventions Network (SHINE) at Islington Council. In 2013 John and SHINE were awarded the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration by the European Commission.

John is also National Chair of the Association of Local Energy Officers, representing colleagues across England and Wales.  He has served on several national policy development bodies, including those that developed the private rented sector energy efficiency regulations and the NICE guidelines on excess winter deaths.

His main interests are in the prevention of seasonal health inequalities, protecting the most vulnerable energy consumers and addressing the unique challenges of delivering energy efficiency in inner cities.

Dr Kerry Mashford 

Kerry has a background in mechanical engineering and for over five years was the chief executive of the National Energy Foundation having previously worked across manufacturing and construction, public and private sectors.   
 
She now works with pioneering organisations in construction and energy systems. Her passion for innovating to create a better performing and more sustainable built environment has led to her work in the retrofit sector as a member of the Each Home Counts Implementation Board and BSI’s Retrofit Standards Task Group and in new-build, including through her recent appointment to the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Advisory Group on Transforming Construction and private sector board member of South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership (SEMLEP).
 
Kerry was awarded an OBE in 2017.  She is a chartered engineer and Fellow of the Institutions of Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Engineering & Technology. (127)

Victoria Pelka

Victoria is a Senior Policy Researcher for Citizens Advice. Since 2014, Citizens Advice is the official consumer body for energy.

The Energy team works to ensure that energy markets and regulation work as well as they can for consumers.

In her role, Victoria conducts research with energy consumers, represents consumer interests on a number of working groups and industry panels, and monitors network company performance.

Prior to joining Citizens Advice, Victoria worked as a research consultant evaluating charity and Government projects in the UK and abroad.

Ian Rowson

A Chartered Accountant and practising economist, Ian has 25 years’ experience in utility regulation, working in government, companies, regulators and in consultancy. He has deep experience of many price control environments and developed the core price control financial models for eight price control reviews in the UK and Ireland.

Latterly he has been in the Civil Aviation Authority and Ofgem, holding the position of Associate Partner, RIIO Finance and Investor Relations for four years at Ofgem and chairing the cross-regulator UKRN cost of capital working group. At Ofgem, he led on finance-related issues through the RIIO-ED1 review and subsequent appeals.

Prior to joining Ofgem, Ian advised a wide range of UK and non-UK clients on regulatory economics and, among other things, authored the November 2012 RIIO Financeability Study for Ofgem.

Martin Silcock

Martin is an independent consultant specialising in regulation, strategy and utilities with recent experience in the UK Water sector. He spent 10 years with Anglian Water, leading two price control submissions with particular focus on regulatory finance, customer engagement and incentives.

Between 2014 and 2017 Martin oversaw implementation of the new non-household retail water market, establishing the new market operating company and was director responsible for market codes, market implementation and industry readiness. 

Before joining Anglian Water, he worked as a consultant specialising in business strategy, policy and regulation across utility sectors, including electricity, gas, water and transport.  Currently working with Ofwat, supporting its work on financial resilience, governance and strategy, Martin is also a chartered accountant with a background in economics.

Leslie Sopp, FMRS BSc

Leslie is an Independent research and insight consultant, specialising in regulatory issues in the energy, water and financial services sectors. He was until May 2019 Chief of Market Research at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). As well as being a member of Cadent's CEG, Leslie is also a member of South East Water’s Customer Challenge Group. 

During the course of an extensive career in market, social and policy research, Leslie has been responsible for and overseen a wide variety of research studies, specialising in competition, policy and supervisory market research; communications research and evaluation, and market segmentation. Leslie previously worked in senior research roles at TheCityUK; Age UK; ICAEW, Which? and started his research career at ONS. He is a Fellow of the Market Research Society. Until 2018 he chaired the MRS Public Sector Editorial Advisory Board, having previously been a Main Board Director and Chair of the Business Board of MRS (2006-2012). From 2000 to 2009 he was a Director of AURA Insight, the client insight managers and research users and buyers group. 

Janet Wood

Janet is the editor of New Power, a monthly report on the UK power sector and the evolving energy industry. She has a BSc in Physics and Chemistry and is the author of books on nuclear power and on local heat and power projects in the UK.

As a journalist for the past 25 years she has written about the power and energy sector, covering technology, policy and politics for a variety of international and UK magazines. She has a longstanding interest in the future of energy and in 2001she launched a magazine, Earthed, about small-scale renewable energy (heat and power) in the UK.

She is interested in the inter-relation between heat, gas, electricity and water markets and in the future of those markets for UK consumers.

Rish Chandarana

Rish is a chartered accountant and transaction director at Arup. He has over 14 years of commercial, regulatory, operational and technical due diligence experience specialising in Energy, Utilities, Oil & Gas industries both in the UK and internationally.

He has advised on over 70 successful transactions over the past 5 years.  As a result he has gained an acute understanding of civil engineering, performance, organisational and business plan drivers, enabling him to affect holistic challenge with senior executives through to operations/ engineering managers.