Technical experts.
Real-life experience.
No generalists.
Just mastery.
All the training is delivered by a hand-picked team of experts foremost in their specialisms with decades of experience in leading complex public consultations.Â
Meet your trainers
Simon Angelides
Simon Angelides is Chief Executive Officer of tCI Group Ltd. His career spans NHS system transformation, strategic consultancy and consultation assurance across more than 25 years. He led system-level transformation programmes across acute clinical services including stroke, planned care, urgent and emergency care and obstetrics, and led diagnostics across three NHS trusts during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has conducted clinical and legal due diligence reviews for New Hospitals Programme service reconfigurations and navigated complex public consultations and judicial reviews.
Earlier in his career he built and led a commercial consultancy arm at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, delivering services and IP licensing across EMEA and North America. He holds a Master’s in Management Development from the Euro-Arab Management School in Granada and contributed to the development of an MBA programme as part of a European Union initiative.
At tCI he draws on that operational background to train on NHS service reconfiguration, bringing direct experience of the governance, legal and engagement demands that complex service change programmes place on organisations.
Courses: Developing a Case for Change, Transport: Congestion, Franchising & Passenger Change, NHS Service Change ConsultationÂ
Mike Bartram
Mike Bartram’s 1997 report on government consultations led directly to the introduction of the UK Government Consultation Code of Practice. His earlier review of consultation practice at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food examined how a central government department gathered and used evidence to support regulatory policy decisions. These two pieces of work established him as one of the leading practitioners in consultation policy in the United Kingdom.
As Head of Consultation at Transport for London he built and led a team responsible for overseeing 150 consultations annually, produced TfL’s consultation policy and toolkit, and personally managed consultation on major infrastructure schemes including the Thames Gateway Bridge and West London Tram. He has conducted peer reviews of the HS2 consultation process across three separate exercises and reviewed the Airports Commission consultation on runway expansion options. On behalf of the World Bank he advised the governments of Morocco and Tunisia on constitutional reform and national consultation policy.
He is a Fellow of tCI and delivers training and advisory work across tCI’s national and international portfolio.
Anna Collins
Anna spent over a decade as a client of the Consultation Institute before joining it, which is worth knowing, because it means her training comes from someone who has sat on the other side of the table. As a Director in the NHS, she led several high-profile service reconfigurations under close public scrutiny, carrying responsibility for communications, patient involvement and corporate governance. She later worked with two Police and Crime Commissioners, leading public and victim consultations on service change in both roles.
That operational history shapes everything she teaches. Her subject expertise covers the Public Sector Equality Duty, co-production, stakeholder analysis, and communication and engagement strategy, with a particular focus on health inequalities, health literacy, and reaching people from protected characteristic groups. She co-authored the National Fire and Rescue Service guidance on consultation for the National Fire Chiefs Council, and holds a Fellowship of both the Consultation Institute and the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Anna’s training is direct and practically oriented. She has designed and delivered modules for practitioners and regularly provides executive briefings for senior teams and decision-makers who need to understand their statutory duties, not just in principle but well enough to act on them.
Courses: Applying Equality Duty to Consultation and Engagement, Co-Production for Consultation & Engagement, Stakeholder Analysis, Mapping and Management, Option Development and Appraisal for Consultation, Option Development, Option Appraisal, Gathering evidence for option developmentÂ
Dr Zoë Cookson
Dr Zoë Cookson is Chief Delivery Officer at tCI Group Ltd. She has over twenty years of experience in public sector reform, NHS reconfiguration, strategy development and multi-stakeholder facilitation, working across health, local government and community safety.
She has produced pre-consultation business cases, decision-making business cases and judicial review documentation for NHS reconfiguration programmes, including Oxfordshire maternity services where the documentation withstood legal challenge. Her community safety merger work was cited as national best practice in Home Office guidance, and she is a member of the Home Office Advisory Group on Community Safety. Her doctorate in Politics from the University of Warwick underpins analytical work that has to meet the standards required for formal public scrutiny.
At tCI she leads the assurance and training functions, overseeing independent reviews for consultations where decisions are contentious, legally exposed or involve vulnerable populations. She trains on the case for change, drawing on her experience writing the documents that have to hold up when challenged.
Courses: Developing a Case for Change, NHS Service Change ConsultationÂ
Barry Creasey
Barry Creasey has spent over 35 years in consultation, evaluation and research. He began at the Agricultural and Food Research Council, running stakeholder consultations on food policy and animal welfare, before spending 19 years at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. There he managed large-scale national research and evaluation programmes, including leading the teacher consultation group programme during the 1994 Dearing Review of the National Curriculum, one of the largest public consultation exercises ever conducted in the United Kingdom.
Since 2006 he has worked as a freelance consultant and course deliverer for tCI, where he trains on questionnaire design, data analysis, focus group methodology and the law of consultation. In 2015 and 2016 he delivered training on questionnaire construction and data analysis to European Commission administrators in Brussels, and has contributed to tCI’s international programmes including the Ukraine public engagement programme. He has conducted independent peer reviews of major national consultations including HS2 and the Airports Commission, and has published four books on consultation methodology. He is a Fellow of the Consultation Institute and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Courses: Advanced Law of Consultation, Data Analysis and Report Writing, Surveys and Questionnaires, Focus Groups, Collecting Information, Data and Sampling, Creating a Coding Frame for Text ResponsesÂ
Nick Duffin
Nick Duffin has been working in consultation and engagement since 1996, first as a practitioner, then from 2003 as a consultant across the private sector, local authorities, health bodies, fire and rescue services, infrastructure organisations and the voluntary sector. He joined tCI as an Associate in 2010 and served as Programme Director from 2017 to 2019, before being awarded Fellowship status. He returned to the field in 2024 and rejoined tCI as Lead Fellow.
He has been delivering training in consultation and engagement, equality methodology and consultation law since 2009. His courses are built on practitioner experience: he has used the same techniques he teaches across a wide range of sectors and organisational contexts, which means he can field questions from practitioners facing genuinely different circumstances and give them a straight answer.
Courses: Applying Law of Consultation, Advanced Law of Consultation, Applying Equality Duty to Consultation and Engagement, Preparing for a Public Consultation, Conducting a Public Consultation, Planning and delivering a project for better participation, Do More with Less, Ten Smart Engagement Techniques, Stakeholder Analysis, Mapping and Management, Option Development and Appraisal for Consultation, Option Development, Option Appraisal, Gathering evidence for option development, Managing challenging situations and misinformation, The Five Phase Approach, Engagement Facilitation Skills, Outputs and Feedback for Conscientious Consideration, Continuous Engagement, Engaging the Seldom Heard, Focus Groups
Rory Hegarty
Rory Hegarty spent over 20 years as a Director of Communications and Engagement in the NHS, leading public consultation and involvement for major service change programmes across three London regions. At NHS South West London he directed communications for Better Services Better Value and the STP covering six boroughs. He then led simultaneously for Our Healthier South East London across a further six boroughs, before becoming Executive Director of Communications and Involvement at NHS North West London, a role he held for nearly eight years, overseeing communications across eight boroughs, four acute hospitals, two mental health trusts and two community trusts, working alongside eight local authorities.
Earlier in his NHS career he led communications at Imperial College Healthcare, then the largest NHS trust in England, and at West London Mental Health NHS Trust, where his responsibilities included Broadmoor Hospital.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Consultation Institute. His training covers communications strategy, the case for change, NHS service change, law to service change and continuous engagement. He brings to the training room the direct experience of someone who has managed public consultation on complex, contested reconfiguration programmes at scale, including the reputational, legal and community dimensions that make or break them.
Courses: Developing a Case for Change, Applying Law to Service Change and Reconfiguration, NHS Service Change Consultation, Engaging the Seldom Heard, Communications skills for engagement professionals
Steve Inett
Steve Inett started his career as a Registered General Nurse and has since worked across social work, community development, adult education and supported housing before moving into leadership roles in the voluntary and community sector. He served as Chief Officer of Healthwatch Kent and Healthwatch Medway for over six years, and has held CEO roles at Citizens Advice and Mind. He is currently Chair of the Kent and Medway VCSE Steering Group.
His tCI work has focused on the Law of Consultation, delivering training and quality assurance to local authorities and NHS organisations. He authored the e-learning programmes on engaging with people online and offline for Healthwatch England, and used tCI training to produce a best practice guide on consultation and engagement during his time at Healthwatch. He supported health and social care commissioners through a complex stroke services consultation that successfully withstood judicial review by two separate parties.
That span of experience, clinical, community, voluntary sector and formal consultation, is what he brings to the training room. He works particularly on co-production and equalities, and the credibility he carries with VCSE organisations and seldom-heard communities is practical rather than assumed.
Courses: Applying Law of Consultation
David Mallett
David Mallett has spent nearly four decades working on NHS governance, regulatory frameworks and service reconfiguration. As Head of Service Policy at Monitor, the statutory regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts, he published a formal regulatory consultation document on clinical quality and service performance and developed the compliance frameworks used to hold Foundation Trusts to account. He subsequently became Chair of the rewriting group and content author for both the 2018 and 2021 revisions of NHS England’s national reconfiguration guidance, Planning, Assuring and Delivering Service Change for Patients.
At NHS England’s London region he programme managed Shaping a Healthier Future, London’s largest NHS reconfiguration, from proposal development through public consultation, Independent Reconfiguration Panel review and judicial review defence. He has served on judicial review defence teams across multiple programmes and supported the governance of Integrated Care Boards during their establishment.
He joined tCI in 2025 and provides service change governance and consultation assurance support across complex and legally exposed NHS reconfiguration programmes.
Courses: Developing a Case for Change, Applying Law to Service Change and Reconfiguration, NHS Service Change Consultation
Alexia Mitton​
Alexia is a senior communications and engagement leader with a proven track record of helping organisations communicate clearly, engage meaningfully, and adopt digital and AI-enabled approaches with confidence. She brings significant experience from across health, care and public-sector systems, where she has led complex programmes, built high-performing multidisciplinary teams, and delivered engagement at scale on issues that matter to communities.
A core part of Alexia’s practice is teaching, coaching and capability-building. She has designed and delivered structured training programmes for engagement practitioners, focused on improving consistency, strengthening process, and raising professional standards across teams. Her training is grounded in real operational experience: she teaches the skills she has personally learned, tested and refined through years of delivering high-stakes engagement, digital transformation and communications leadership. This makes her sessions practical, relevant and immediately applicable for practitioners working in fast-moving environments.
Courses: Introduction to Digital Engagement, Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Consultation and Engagement, Communications skills for engagement professionals, Advanced Digital Engagement, Advanced AI for Consultation and Engagement
Rachel Richardson
Rachel is a communications, engagement and digital specialist with 18 years of experience across health and public services, from frontline patient experience through to senior leadership. She has led consultations, large scale engagement programmes and digital transformation initiatives, building long term relationships with communities, VCSE organisations and partners across the public sector.
She is known for her ability to connect the strategic and the human, designing systems and processes that embed community voice into everyday decision making, long before formal consultation is required.
A core part of Rachel’s practice is developing people and building capability, with a particular interest in all things digital and accessibility. She has designed and delivered training programmes for teams at every level, on community engagement, digital communications and, increasingly, the practical and responsible use of AI. Her coaching qualification underpins a training style that is warm, direct and firmly focused on real world application. She teaches what she has personally built, tested and embedded in her own organisations, making her sessions immediately relevant with tools people can use straight away.
Courses: Introduction to Digital Engagement, Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Consultation and Engagement, Communications skills for engagement professionals, Advanced Digital Engagement, Advanced AI for Consultation and Engagement
Andy Wright
Andy Wright has worked in public engagement and social research for over 30 years, beginning his career as a business analyst at British Telecom before moving into public sector consultancy. He has since specialised in community engagement, hard-to-reach group engagement, digital engagement, public health, skills and regeneration, working across the UK and Europe.
He has led large-scale deliberative facilitation in complex, multi-stakeholder settings, developed stakeholder consultation strategy for the Office for National Statistics, and managed multi-million-pound European Social Fund programmes. As part of tCI’s Ukraine public engagement programme, he delivered structured training to members of the Ukrainian Civil Service and local NGOs, with courses running simultaneously in English and Ukrainian.
At tCI he provides advice, guidance, training and quality assurance to NHS, local government, central government and executive agency clients. His training draws on practical experience across feasibility studies, large-scale programme evaluation and engagement with communities that standard approaches do not reach.
Courses: Making Community Engagement Meaningful, Co-Production for Consultation & Engagement, Advanced Co-Production, Preparing for a Public Consultation, Conducting a Public Consultation, Ten Smart Engagement Techniques, Option Development and Appraisal for Consultation, Option Development, Option Appraisal, Gathering evidence for option development, Managing challenging situations and misinformation, The Five Phase Approach, Engagement Facilitation Skills, Outputs and Feedback for Conscientious Consideration, Continuous Engagement, Data Analysis and Report Writing, Surveys and Questionnaires, Focus Groups, Collecting Information, Data and Sampling, Creating a Coding Frame for Text ResponsesÂ
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