I run this communications consultancy as an associates business and have worked with a number of very fine, experienced practitioners including Sheree Dodd, Nick Wood, Paul Atkinson and Peter Hill. Most recently we have run the entire communications function for the Office of the Policyholder Advocate and conducted a communications audit for the Association of Train Operating companies. This led to a large scale change and the appointment of a new director of corporate affairs.Haslamedia provided hands on support and placed an interim director of corporate affairs. Other clients include a leading metals and minerals inspection company, a packaging company and presentation and speech writing for a commodity trading house.

Sheree Dodd and I have worked together as associates on big projects such as the Office of the Policyholder Advocate and the Global Diabetes Forum held on the eve of the International Diabetes Federation’s World Congress.In 2015 we decided to seek out new business opportunities together, concentrating on high-level strategic communications advice. Our first project as HaslamDodd was to organise and report on a consultation about a highly contentious proposal that a school in Norwich should become an academy. This involved national and local politics and working closely for the Interim Executive Board that was tasked with the first stages of a recovery plan. It was a fascinating project. It drew on our respective strengths and experiences in government and the media. It could not be described as a mainstream communications job and that plays to our strengths as people who can tackle the unusual and difficult. We believe that the resulting 95 page report will stand the test of time as a model of how to tackle difficult issues and properly reflect the views of the various stakeholders.

Smith Square Partners provides high quality financial advice to entrepreneurs, boards, shareholders, management teams and non-executive directors of companies on acquisitions and sales (including public takeovers), capital raisings, capital markets transactions, refinancings and restructurings.We are also on the UK Government Cabinet Office corporate finance advisory framework.

Presentation skills tutor and business development

A wide ranging brief for a unique office, created under Financial Service Authority rules. The office represented the interest of a million with-profits policyholders in a 'reattribution of inherited estate'. I set up the office with Clare Spottiswoode, the policyholder advocate, and ran all communications including media handling , strategy, policyholder communications, website building, running roadshows, undertaking focus groups and deliberative events. Just to add to this mix I also managed a call centre operation in Chennai and a correspondence office in Norwich.

Responsible for communications and marketing of LME, especially rebuilding corporarte reputation post - Hamanaka copper scandal

Working for then Prime Minister, John Major, first as his deputy press secretary and then chief press secretary. For a 10 month period in between these jobs I was the director of communications at MAFF and responsible for the government communications response to the Scott Inquiry on Arms to Iraq, a posting in the Cabinet Office.