Colin Cram has held senior positions in the public sector for the past 30 years, including central (such as the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury) and local government, higher education and the wider public sector. He has been responsible throughout for initiating and implementing innovative strategies for procurement, shared services, outsourcings and organisational re-engineering. Savings from his initiatives exceed £1bn.

Colin has created and managed several pioneering joint and shared service procurement organisations, influencing spend of up to £7bn a year. He was a founder member of the Central Unit on Purchasing (the forerunner of the Office of Government Commerce), created and led the Research Councils' Procurement Organisation, the Benefits Agency Contracts Organisation and was the first Director of the North Western Universities' Purchasing Consortium. Latterly, he was Director of the North West Centre of Excellence, creating and delivering collaborative opportunities in procurement and shared services for 47 local authorities.

A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, Colin has been appointed a senior adviser to the Office of Government Commerce and is a member of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE). He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences and training events, and is a regular contributor to professional journals. He has been a member of European working groups on procurement, innovation and sustainability. He runs a successful consultancy, Marc1 Ltd.


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The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MBE was elected Member of Parliament for Barking in 1994. She is also the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

She carried out the following roles in the Labour Government between 1998 and 2010: Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Employment and Equal Opportunities, Department for Education and Employment (1998-2001); Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, Department for Education and Skills (2001-2003); Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, Department for Education and Skills (2003-2005); Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform in the Department for Work and Pensions (2005-2006); Minister of State for Industry and the Regions in the Department for Trade and Industry (2006-2007); and Minister for Culture, the Creative Industries and Tourism in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2007-2010), during which time she took a year's compassionate leave to care for her terminally ill husband.

In the 2010 General Election, Margaret fought off the challenge from Nick Griffin and the British National Party in her constituency, doubling her majority to 16,555. Also in 2010, Margaret became the first ever female Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. She was elected by fellow MPs in the first elections to be held for select committee Chairs.

Margaret entered politics in 1973 as a councillor for the London Borough of Islington where she was Chair of the Housing Committee from 1975 to 1979 and Deputy Leader from 1981 to 1982, before becoming Leader from 1982 to 1992. She spent two years as a consultant for Price Waterhouse from 1992 to 1994. Prior to her appointment to the DfEE, she was Joint Chairman of the House of Commons Education and Employment Select Committee.

Margaret was educated at Bromley High School and Oxford High School before obtaining a BSc at the London School of Economics. She is widowed with four children and eight grandchildren.

Presentation: Delivering a lean and efficient public sector

Maintaining high-quality public services requires a vigorous approach to working more efficiently. Techniques such as lean are fundamental to achieving this.

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Steve Robinson is the dynamic and inspirational leader of the new unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester. He has positioned the organisation as one of the country's most progressive and forward-looking councils.

The council launched in 2009, and since then Steve has stamped his mark on the local government landscape by creating an energetic and innovative council that is making people sit up and take notice.

He sees this role as a rare and unique opportunity to make his vision of delivering truly customer-centred services a reality.

Presentation: Delivering leaner public services, improving performance

The merging of several local authorities has not only meant merging service delivery teams, but has released a wave of innovation that challenges existing service delivery models, providing leaner, fitter and more relevant services. This has required both strong leadership and staff engagement.

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Dr Neil Jarrett is a chartered engineer with qualifications and experience in business management. His early career was in the management, design and supervision of major construction projects in the UK and overseas. He worked at DETR on the implementation of the Egan report and established firstly the DTI's Construction Best Practice Programme and then the Collaborative Working Centre (CWC). CWC is the specialist consultancy and training arm of Construction Excellence, supporting clients and their supply chains during procurement and establishing behaviours and processes for successful long-term collaborative frameworks that deliver major value improvements.

CWC currently works for over 50 clients in the civil, housing and property sectors. Neil's specialist knowledge includes managing organisational change for supply chain partnering including collaborative contracts, integrating design and construction processes and behaviour change in collaboration with The Birch Group, supporting expert process improvement consultants and academics to improve the business effectiveness of the health service, mentoring change within healthcare organisations to ensure excellent patient care through flexible, responsive and efficient services.

Andrew Fordyce biography to follow.



Presentation: Delivering more with less

Delivering more with less is easy to say, but that is what the NHS has been required to do. Discussing Devon NHS Trust's drive for leaner ways of working.

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As Head of Continuous Improvement Across Government, Gregg Hobbs is responsible for enabling and facilitating central government departments in the creation and implementation of their continuous improvement strategies and implementation plans.

Accredited in Lean by Cardiff University whilst at HMRC, and qualified in Programme Management, Gregg is experienced in change and change leadership.

Although a career civil servant, Gregg has experience of change management in both the public and private sectors. Having spent time in large organisations such as RBS and the MoD during his career, Gregg brings with him in-depth experience from a diverse background. More recently, Gregg led on the continuous improvement policy for HMRC as part of their PaceSetter (continuous improvement) programme where he also redesigned and relaunched HMRC's ideas sharing platform as a complement to continuous improvement.

Presentation: Continuous improvement and integration: what next?

A brief look at the successes of government, and the broader public service, in implementing continuous improvement techniques, and an exploration in to how we build on these achievements by working better and more closely across organisation boundaries.

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Born in Preston, Lancashire, 60 years ago, Paul Bettison has spent most of his life to date in the South of England. Paul has been married to Jean for 36 years, and they have two daughters, Clare (29) and Emily (28).

Having spent 10 successful years with US based Rockwell International before setting up his own successful business supplying printing equipment to the UK newspaper and general printing industry during the mid-1980s, Paul turned to local politics as his next challenge in 1991. He was elected to Sandhurst Town Council in May of that year, and to Bracknell Forest Borough Council at a by-election in October 1991. He rose first in the Town Council, becoming Deputy Mayor in 1992 and Mayor from 1993-1995. In 1996 Paul was elected leader of the Conservative group (then in opposition) at Bracknell Forest. In the elections in May 1997, Paul led the Conservatives to victory, gaining the distinction of being the only Conservative leader in the country to wrest power from Labour on what was generally not a good day for the Conservative cause!

Under Paul's leadership, the Conservative group at Bracknell Forest managed a 'seamless' transition to unitary status in 1998, and following many innovative local government initiatives, he led his group to further gains in May 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2011 with swings to the Conservatives of twice the national average.

Paul is active within the LGA, and is firmly committed to local government representation at the highest level. From 2000 to 2002 he was Chairman of the LGA's Housing Executive and oversaw the introduction of many innovations in Bracknell Forest's housing service. Paul believes fervently in local authorities' power of community wellbeing and asks, 'What could be more fundamental to anyone's wellbeing than the roof over their head?' From 2002 – 2004 he chaired the LGA's Rural Commission and Executive, and was successful in persuading DEFRA that local government can play a key rôle in the delivery of the rural agenda in the post-Haskins era. From 2006 – 2009 he chaired the LGA Environment Board, where he gained national recognition as the 'Bin Baron'. Paul chaired LG Regulation (formerly LACORS - Local Authority Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services) and sat on the LGA Executive from 2009 - 2012. Paul was, for five years, the Local Government Association e-Government Champion and was Conservative Party's National spokesman on local government ICT matters.

Located in the heart of the UK's 'silicon valley' Paul's authority of Bracknell Forest is seen as the leading UK council in the area of electronic service delivery, with Bracknell Forest on-line, BF Net, a thriving CRM roll-out, and the world's first multi-application smartcard – e+. A long list of awards is testimony to his council's commitment to e-Government.

Paul also chaired the Berkshire Leaders' Group, and has been on the Board of Directgov, Government Connect, and of the National Opportunity Card. He chairs the Waste Partnership Member Board of iESE (Improvement and Efficiency Social Enterprise) and is also Chairman of the Board of IESE Ltd. He is the National Lead Conservative Member Peer at LGID (formerly the Improvement & Development Agency). Paul is a Trustee of Keep Britain Tidy and of the GLA (Gangmasters Licensing Authority) and the GLA Audit & Risk Committee.

A firm believer in self-help for local government, Paul spent 18 months as a peer mentor to the Leader of the Conservative Group of Hackney LBC, and performed the same task for the Leader of Walsall MBC for 5 years. Paul has worked with Swindon Borough Council, Kingston upon Hull Council, North East Lincs Council, Plymouth Borough Council, Trafford MBC, Northampton Borough Council, Milton Keynes Borough Council, Southampton City Council and the Isle of Wight Council. He is the National Lead Conservative Member Peer at LG Improvement and Development (formerly known as I&DeA.)


Presentation: Local government of the future: reshaping local authorities and their services

Existing service delivery models are often no longer viable, appropriate or necessary. iESE is working with councils to help them challenge the way things have been done and to support them through some difficult decisions and change.

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Colin Talbot's main area of expertise in is public services and public management reform. He has recently completed major international comparative studies on the creation of arm's length agencies (for the UK government and ESRC); of the use of performance reporting systems (for the National Audit Office); and of budget participation and scrutiny systems (for the Scottish Parliament). He has advised Parliamentary Committees on performance and public spending issues for the Treasury, Public Administration and Welsh Affairs Committees.

Colin has advised a wide range of international public sector organisations and/or carried out research in countries as diverse as Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, Tanzania, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Hong Kong, Malta and Sweden, and spoken at conferences and seminars in over two dozen countries.

Colin has had an unconventional career - he left school at 16 and worked in various jobs before going to Manchester University as an undergraduate at 21. After Manchester he worked in a variety of mainly public sector posts before completing an MSc in Public Sector Management at Southbank University (with Distinction) and then becoming a senior lecturer in 1990 at Southbank. He completed a PhD at the London School of Economics before becoming Chair of Public Policy and Management at Glamorgan University in 1995 and Chair of Public Policy at Nottingham in 2003, and is now Chair of Public Policy and Management at Manchester Business School.

Presentation: How scrutiny can contribute to performance

For more than 20 years there has been a growth of performance scrutiny in the UK and elsewhere. Ranging from external quality, audit and inspection bodies through democratic scrutiny to various forms of peer-review, every aspect of public sector performance has been put under the microscope.
Recent scandals (e.g Mid-Sstaffs) have, however, begun to raise questions about how good external scrutiny is at identifying problems and how the triangular relationship between principals, agents and scrutineers work in practice. The session will address the issue of how scrutiny can be made to work better for enhancing performance.

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After leaving school, Christine Stewart spent two and a half years working in the financial sector in Glasgow before gaining a BEng (Hons) in Manufacturing Systems with Management. Having successfully secured sponsorship with BAE Systems, Christine spent seven years implementing a number of improvement tools and techniques across the business. While at BAE, Christine discovered the philosophy of lean and learnt how improvement is sustainable when implemented using the skills and knowledge of the people who know the business. This is a philosophy she has continued to follow with her work as Continuous Improvement Manager at MFI, Model Office Manager with Unum Provident and in running her own consultancy company.

As Head of the Lean University at Cardiff University, Christine is responsible for improving processes that impact on students, research and staff. The main objective for the Lean University team is to create a culture of continuous improvement across the institution. This is about enabling people to take ownership of their day-to-day work and constantly seek to ensure that their service meets the needs of their customer.

Presentation: Lean project management

When faced with an improvement project, it can be hard to determine what is really important and even harder to ensure everyone is engaged. Using a lean approach to project management, Cardiff University is helping project owners to agree, drive and communicate their improvement initiatives.

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