Hayhoe: Professional regulation experience
A management consultant with significant retail and healthcare experience has been named as the new chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel.
Tom Hayhoe will succeed Sarah Chambers, who has served two three-year terms, on 1 May.
The panel, which was created by the Legal Services Act 2007, is an independent arm of the Legal Services Board and is tasked with providing advice to it based on the needs of users.
Mr Hayhoe’s academic background is as a historian and business economist. He spent many years in the private sector working as a management consultant with McKinsey, the Brackenbury Group and The Chambers, and in retail management with WH Smith – latterly as strategic planning manager – and chairing the board of video game retailer Gamestation.
He spent 12 years, until last year, as a strategy adviser to HRV Fit, an international software and biosensor development company.
He served as a non-executive director of NHS bodies alongside his commercial roles before becoming chair of West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust and, for the past eight years, chair of West London NHS Trust.
Having been a fitness to practice panel chair with the Nursing and Midwifery Council for a decade to 2022, Mr Hayhoe has in the past year secured a series of other non-executive roles in professional regulation, as chair of the Taxation Disciplinary Board, a panel chair for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, and an external assessor for the College of Policing.
Alongside the consumer panel, he has just been appointed chair of the advisory board for Jersey’s Health and Community Services.
Legal Services Board chair Alan Kershaw said: “We look forward to benefiting from Tom’s broad experience and knowledge and working with him in the public interest to ensure legal services better meet the needs of people who need them.
“I would also like to thank Sarah for her considerable contribution to the Legal Services Consumer Panel. Under her leadership, the panel has gone from strength to strength, and she leaves it as a major and credible source of advice and direction in the sector. “
Mr Hayhoe said: “I am looking forward to applying my experience addressing the needs of consumers and representing the interests of the public to the important work of the Legal Services Consumer Panel.”
Mr Hayhoe blogs about the Escondido Framework [1], which he describes as “an alternative way of thinking about the theory of the firm, organisations, and political economy”.
Married to a former Network Rail general counsel who is now retraining as a physiotherapist, back in the 1980s Mr Hayhoe stood for election with the SDP. He and his wife are keen competitive sailors [2].