Our Board
Our Board is made up of a non-executive Chairman and six non-executive members, and the Chief Executive.
The Board is responsible for the overall strategic direction of the organisation and ensuring that it meets its legal obligations. Minutes of Board meetings are available to the public via the Utility Regulator’s website.
Board Members
Peter Matthews – Chairman
Peter Matthews has been Chairman of the Utility Regulator since April 2006. He spent over 25 years at Anglian Water in a number of roles and retired as Deputy Managing Director of Anglian Water International. He was appointed in February 2009 as a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for a term of three years.
In 2006 he joined the Port of London Authority as a Board Member and is a past President of the European Water Association, Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and past Chair of the Society for the Environment. From 2000 to 2006, he was appointed to the Board of the Environment Agency and Chair of its Audit Committee. He served on the Board of Anglia Ruskin University and is currently a Visiting Professor. He was awarded an OBE in 2007 for services to water and the environment.
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Etain Doyle
Etain Doyle, a Vistage Group Chair managing peer learning circles for CEOs and a consultant on Regulatory/Governance matters, has been a member of the Board since October 2006. She is a Member of the Executive Board of the Institute of International and European Affairs and Vice-Chair of the Wheel, and a Director of the (cross-border based) Military Heritage of Ireland Trust.
In 1997, she set up the first sectoral regulatory agency in Dublin and served as Telecoms Regulator for the following seven years. Her earlier career was mainly in aid management in Russia, and in the Departments of Finance and Foreign Affairs. She is a qualified accountant (FCCA) and holds a degree in History and Politics from UCD.
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Clive Elphick
Clive Elphick is a former Managing Director of Asset Management and Regulation at United Utilities Group plc and has been a member of the Utility Regulator’s Board since October 2006. His other current roles include being the chairman of the CBI for the North West of England.
Prior to joining United Utilities, he qualified as an accountant with ICI and then worked as a management consultant with Deloitte & Touche. He joined what was North West Water Group PLC in 1991 and held positions including Regulation Director, Group Strategic Planning Director and Chief Operating Officer of the regulated business. He has also had secondments to the Cabinet Office and Ofwat and for five years was a non-executive director of a Department of State. He has a degree in natural sciences from Queens’ College, Cambridge and a doctorate in operational research from Birmingham University.
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Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson, a member of the Utility Regulator’s Board since October 2006, has extensive experience in the electricity sector having held a variety of executive and senior management positions covering all aspects of the supply chain. His previous appointments include periods with LIFE IC, Ocean Power, National Power, Coopers and Lybrand, North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board, British Electricity International and the Central Electricity Generating Board with whom he originally undertook a student apprenticeship.
He has built a number of successful new energy businesses including Innogy (now RWE Innogy), npower CoGen and National Power Energy Direct which was the first direct supply business following electricity privatisation in England and Wales. Philip is a Chartered Engineer and holds an MBA (Insigni Laude) from Glasgow University and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Energy Technology from Aston University; he is a fellow of the Energy Institute.
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Christopher Le Fevre
Chris Le Fevre has over 30 years experience in the energy and transport sectors, and is currently a director of his own consultancy company, Le Fevre Consulting Ltd, which operates primarily in the natural gas sector. He became a board member in October 2006.
From 1994 to 2002 he was a director of the gas transportation company Transco plc performing a variety of roles including Transportation Services, Network Operations and Metering. Prior to this he worked for British Gas plc in the Global Gas and E&P departments. He has also worked as a Petroleum Economics Engineer with Shell International Petroleum in Holland and Malaysia. Prior to that he worked for British Rail as a local manager and transport consultant and the University of Aston as a research assistant.
He is Chairman of Trustees of Action for Children in Conflict and a Non Executive Director of the South Central Strategic Health Authority.
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James Oatridge
A board member since October 2006, Jim Oatridge has had a varied career having worked in the public and private sectors, with experience of local government, electricity supply and more than 25 years in the water industry. Until 2005 he was Group Services Director with Severn Trent.
He has had a long interest in international water issues through involvement with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and was its President in 2002/03.
He also holds non-executive director roles at Wolverhampton City PCT, Animal Health (a DEFRA agency), a private sector organisation and two not-for-profit organisations. He was awarded an OBE in the 2003 New Year honours list ‘for services to the UK and Global Water Industries’.
Jim has an economics degree from Warwick University, and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.
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Iain Osborne – Chief Executive
Iain Osborne has a degree in French literature from Oxford University and an MA (Economics) from Manchester University. His first job involved caring for adults with learning difficulties, and then he joined the GB Department of Trade and Industry, where he worked on industrial competitiveness and telecommunications policy. Leaving the Civil Service he joined McKinsey and Company, the strategic management consultancy. He later worked in a variety of senior roles with telecommunications companies, including the leading pan-European internet backbone operator. On joining Ofgem he became responsible for regulation of electricity and gas supply to end-users. This involved monitoring growing competition and progressive deregulation – for instance, he removed domestic price controls. He also created a strong enforcement team, leading to the first fines on energy companies for failure to meet acceptable standards of customer service. He moved to Brussels in 2004, where he worked on the European Commission’s competition-law review of energy markets, with particular focus on gas. He has served on a number of voluntary boards and as a school governor.
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Alan Rainey
Alan Rainey has been a board member of the Utility Regulator since September 2007. Following his graduation from Queen’s University Belfast in 1968 he has held a wide range of engineering and management positions in the energy industry in Ireland. An electrical engineer by profession, he has worked on and directed the development and maintenance of electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems throughout Ireland and overseas, working initially for the Electricity Supply Board in the Republic and latterly for the Viridian Group and then Northern Ireland Energy Holdings.
Joining Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) in 1990, he directed the development, construction and maintenance of NIE’s transmission and distribution networks. In more recent years, he managed NIE’s interconnector business, investing in Northern Ireland’s external electricity links and directed the Moyle Interconnector project – the link between Northern Ireland and Scotland, from its initial feasibility studies and consents through to financing and commercial operation. In addition he was Project Director on the development of Huntstown Power Limited, the first independent power producer in the Republic.
From 2003 until 2007, he was Managing Director of the Moyle Interconnector companies. In 2005, on the takeover of the Moyle companies, he was appointed Executive Director on the board of Northern Ireland Energy Holdings Limited, the enlarged mutual group owning and operating Northern Ireland’s electricity and gas interconnectors with Great Britain.
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Board Minutes
Copies of Board minutes for the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation (which was formally established from 1 April 2007) and its predecessor organisations can be found on this website.
Board minutes relating to meetings that have taken place during 2010-11 are listed below
28 January 2010
12 February 2010
12 March_2010
28 April 2010
14 May 2010
All other Board minutes can be found in the Publications page of the website.