Chris has been in passenger advocacy for more than thirty years. When chair of the Rail Passengers’ Committee (RPC) for Western England, in September 2001 he launched the South West Public Transport Users’ Forum (SWPTUF) to advise it on all aspects of public transport. RPCs were replaced in 2005 by a centralised national body, Passenger Focus (later Transport Focus), so Chris worked with colleagues to relaunch SWPTUF as a community interest company – TravelWatch SouthWest. Initial funding came from the Regional Assembly (where he already represented public transport users) with support from Passenger Focus and key transport operators.

Chris has retained his links with Transport Focus: he is their European Policy Adviser, representing it in the European Passengers’ Federation which he was involved in founding in 2002. He represented passengers on the board of the European Railway Agency, which sets the EU’s railway safety and technical interoperability rules, later becoming its chair. He advised the EU on transport priorities for its Horizon R&D investment programmes until Brexit. He served two terms until 2018 as UK chair of the Franco-British Intergovernmental Commission that oversees the Channel Tunnel on behalf of the two governments. He co-chairs the sector mirror group advising the intergovernmental Platform working to develop cross-border passenger rail services throughout Europe and the passengers’ expert representative in the transport work of the UN in Geneva.
Chris lives in Wiltshire having spent much of his earlier career in the media, ultimately holding senior positions in the BBC World Service before becoming Managing Director of Guinness World Records. In all his transport work he starts by asking “How do passengers benefit?”