Board of Trustees

Gordon Scobbie

Chair of Trustees

Gordon has a wealth of experience within the public safety sector and has operated at every level within UK policing from constable to chief officer.

In 2009, whilst Assistant Chief Constable with West Midlands Police, he created a national policing portfolio to respond to the challenges of the digital age. As the ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) lead for Social Media and Digital Engagement, he helped UK policing establish itself as a world leader in embracing the opportunities to engage with communities more effectively through digital channels. He was a leading player in the ACPO and Home Office response to the disorder across England in August 2011 where the role of social media was influential.

Gordon took the post of Deputy Chief Constable within Tayside Police, Scotland in November 2010 and continued with his ACPO work on Digital across UK policing. He was also directly involved in the formation of Police Scotland, amalgamating the 8 Scottish Police Forces and central agencies into a single centralised force. Gordon retired from policing in March 2013 and immediately established his own company to focus on social media and digital transformation.

Gordon joined a small social media analytics start-up company in early 2013 as Law Enforcement Director. In October 2014, having firmly established the company in the UK and internationally, he sought a fresh challenge with Ericsson, in the role of Head of Public Safety and Sales Director, West and Central Europe. After 2 years in this role, Gordon took some time out before returning to consultancy work, including some bespoke work with Yoti, a digital identity company. Gordon then joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) in June 2018 as business development manager, National Security and Public Safety, before being lured back to Yoti in January 2019 as Country Lead for Scotland. In September 2021 Gordon joined Securium, a cyber intelligence start-up, as Head of Business Development and Strategy.

Gordon has a Law degree from the University of Strathclyde (Ross Harper prize winner for criminal law) and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Birmingham.

Peter Stevens

Peter has had a career spanning more than 40 years in the banking and finance sector. He is currently non-executive chair of two companies in the sector; Revolut UAB the Lithuanian Subsidiary of Revolut Ltd a fast-growing app based financial services business with over 25 million customers and Cirdan Capital Management Limited a boutique business providing structured investment products. He is also a member of the investment Committee of Gulf Capital Credit, which provides investment funds for businesses across the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also a board member and former President (2019-2020) of the UK chapter of theTurnaround Management Association (TMA).

Starting with Barclays, he also worked at Credit Agricole Indosuez and from 2001 until 2013 at Credit Suisse where, as a Managing Director, he was head of Corporate Credit for the EMEA region. Since leaving Credit Suisse he has had a variety of NED and consultancy roles, notably as a Non-Executive Director at Essar UK, the 2nd largest oil refinery in the UK and as a Senior Adviser with Duff & Phelps, the international restructuring firm, as head of Credit at SME Capital which provides funding to SME businesses in the UK. 

He joined the board of Trustees of Childnet International in 2007 and as such has taken a keen interest in the field of internet safety through this role. He was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in 2005. He is married with two children.

Claire Bethel

Claire Bethel was until 2016 a deputy director in the Department of Health, responsible for children and young people’s health and wellbeing, focusing on children and young people’s mental health, leading to the development of the Future in Mind report and policy on children’s health as well as safeguarding. Prior to that, she was responsible for policy on social exclusion and the health aspects of safeguarding and interpersonal and public space violence, including domestic and sexual violence and abuse and knife crime. In 2005, she was the first director of policy and research at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. She also led an NHS primary care organisation in South London.

Since leaving the Department of Health, Claire has worked as a consultant, consulting on a range of issues mainly related to domestic and sexual violence and the prevention of violence. She has evaluated several interventions, including the Child House in London, and several projects aimed at preventing perpetrators of domestic abuse from reoffending, the prevention of serious youth violence through schools-based interventions and contextual safeguarding. Claire is also Chair of the Association of Young People’s Health. 

Rachel Armitage

Prof. Rachel Armitage is a Professor of Criminology within the School of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. She founded the highly successful multi-disciplinary institute - The Secure Societies Institute (SSI), which she directed between 2014 and 2018. Prof. Armitage’s research focuses upon the role of design (place, space, products and systems) in influencing both anti-social and pro-social behaviour. She has conducted research on the subject of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) for over 20 years - evaluating the effectiveness of the Secured by Design (SBD) award scheme, investigating the links between housing design and crime risk, exploring the tensions and synergies between security and sustainability and studying international approaches to preventing crime through design. Her work has been referenced in local, national and international planning policy and guidance, and she aims to ensure that consideration for crime prevention is on the agenda of all agencies involved in planning and developing the built environment. More recently, she has conducted several projects exploring the role of design in counterterrorism at critical infrastructure sites, in particular, multi-modal passenger terminals. 

Rachel’s research on housing design has also focused upon the role of housing in the prevention of domestic abuse (specifically the Sanctuary scheme), and the impact of housing on mental and physical health. 

As well as her focus upon crime prevention within the built environment, Rachel works closely with many agencies to explore the impact of secondary victimisation of online child sexual abuse – particularly IIOC (Indecent Images of Children). Rachel is the Deputy Chair of Trustees for the Marie Collins Foundation; a Trustee of Acts Fast and a founder and trustee of the charity Talking Forward - a peer support group for families affected by online child sexual abuse. She is a founding member of the national Indirect Victims of Indecent Images of Children Investigations (IVIIC) National Strategic Group - working closely with key agencies to explore policy and practice responses to non-offending partners (NOPs) and children of IIOC offenders. 

Rachel has published extensively on the subject of designing out crime, including a sole authored book: Crime Prevention through Housing Design (2013) published by Palgrave Macmillan, and edited collections: Rebuilding Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (2019) published by Routledge, and Retail Crime – International Evidence and Prevention (2018) published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is on the Editorial Board of several journals including: Security Journal (Book Reviews Editor), the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, Crime Prevention and Community Safety and Frontiers in Psychology, Forensic and Legal Psychology. 

Rachel is an invited member of the Home Office Safer Streets Committee; the Home Office National Burglary Taskforce; the Home Office Vehicle Crime Taskforce; the Child Sexual Abuse Academic Network; the China Safe Cities Advisory Group, and the ActEarly City Collaboratory project (led by Bradford Institute for Health Research) to develop innovative approaches to the prevention of ill health. 

Lucy Legard

Lucy Legard is a director of a private property investment and development company.  Originally, she trained and qualified as a solicitor, working first with Allen & Overy in London, where she gained experience in Charity Law, before relocating to Yorkshire with Booth & Co. 

As a secondary state school governor for over 15 years, including an 8 year period as Chair of Governors at Malton School, she has been involved in all aspects of school improvement including the delivery of large infrastructure projects.  Invited by the Wellcome Trust, she contributed to the development of a project aimed at improving school governance nationally.

The product of this, a Recommended Code of Governance, was subsequently adopted by the National Governors Association.   At a regional level she was designated a Local Leader of Governance for the Local Authority.  

Through her involvement in education she has acquired an understanding of safeguarding issues and has undertaken relevant training.  She has actively supported a range of charities connected with children and young people including serving as a trustee of the Yorkshire Children’s Hospital Fund.    

Oliver Dockray

Oliver is a Partner with KPMG in the UK, specialising in designing IT systems to help organisations and individual’s meet their tax obligations. He is a Chartered Accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

Alongside his accountancy expertise, Oliver will also bring extensive knowledge of the operation and design of technology systems. He is a passionate believer in how the safe use of technology can improve our personal and professional lives. This inspired him to work with MCF in delivering their mission of ensuring that when technology is misused, that no further harm is suffered by the victims during the response.

Oliver has worked at KPMG since 2008 and qualified as a Chartered accountant in 2012. He graduated from with a Law degree from King’s College London in 2007.

Charlotte Aynsley

Charlotte has a board range of experience in the field of digital safeguarding - for 10 years she led Becta’s advice and support to Government, local authorities and schools on keeping children safe online. She also worked with Dr Tanya Byron on her review of Safer Children in a Digital World - leading the implementation and co-ordination of the education recommendations in the Review as part of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS).

In April 2010, Charlotte became Director of Practice at the children’s charity – Beatbullying, where she was responsible for the innovative Cybermentors programme, a peer to peer online support service for children and young people. In 2011, Charlotte was seconded to NCA CEOP where she conducted a review of CEOP’s educational programmes and made recommendations to CEOP’s board on the future direction of the Thinkuknow programme which has been delivered to thousands of professionals across the country.

In 2013 Charlotte started her own consultancy – Charlotte Aynsley Consultants – Rethinking Safeguarding and she has worked on several high profile programmes and initiatives including the NSPCC’s Share Aware campaign, The It Starts With you online safety campaign from Walt Disney/Club Penguin, Parent Zone’s Parenting in the Digital Age programme, the Keeping Children Safe online safety guide and the Sexting in schools – what to do and how to handle it document.

She has spoken about digital safeguarding at several key national and international events including the UN and supported local authorities, the police, children’s organisations and international NGO’s in educating professionals, parents, children and young people on all things online safety related.

In 2016 Charlotte worked with UKCCIS and NCA CEOP authoring national advice on responding to incidents of sexting – Sexting in schools and colleges: Responding to incidents and safeguarding young people. Since the advice has been published she has delivered training to over 500 professionals supporting them in planning their response to incidents of sexting.

More recently Charlotte has been working with several high profile organisations including the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), NCA – CEOP, the Princes Trust, Girlguiding, The Mayor of London and the NSPCC to develop leading edge safer platforms and advice and resources for professionals working with children to keep them safer online.

Debbie Crawford

Debbie has worked in support of Children and Young People for several years, initially as a frontline practitioner supporting those excluded from mainstream education due to social emotional behavioural issues.  She also volunteered as an advocate for young adults with learning disabilities and supported them to cope with the challenges of life and the risks they were exposed to so that they were more prepared to cope and manage. 

Debbie achieved several grants for delivery of Children’s Workforce Development Standards during the Labour period in government and during this time qualified as an adult educator so that she could impart her knowledge and experience on others to enable them to deliver good support for children and young people both within and outside of education. 

Working in a local authority creates lots of opportunities to widen your experiences and knowledge and it was this that enabled Debbie to become a Head of Service for the centralised learning unit within Central Bedfordshire Council, supporting workforce development both internally and externally to the council.  This has included being responsible for Safeguarding Training in Central Beds, Bedford Borough and Luton. It was in this role that Debbie was able to engage with MCF and be part of the development of the “Think Act and Manage” pathways and the related development of eLearning and classroom activity.  More recently she has supported a pilot project with Swansea University to provide access to Dragon S which is a great supportive tool for the workforce.