Regional Tech Spotlight on South West of England: Trends & Opportunities

Andrew Allan-Jones

Head of Intellectual Property, DAC Beachcroft

Andrew is DAC Beachcroft's Head of Intellectual Property and advises public and private sector clients on IP protection and management, commercialisation and disputes.

Andrew's recent experience includes:

• Acting on a UK, German and US patent dispute involving medical ventilator technology
• Acting on a book publishing copyright dispute for children's books
• Advising on the transfer and licensing of IP assets for health sector restructuring
• Advising on international licensing agreements for health trusts

Advising technology scale ups on IP licensing with international tech companies

Stephen Bashford

Director of Business and Skills, West of England Combined Authority

Stephen Bashford is Director of Business and Skills at the West of England Combined Authority, leading the delivery of a multimillion pound portfolio of programmes and services to drive the growth and development of the region’s economy. This includes the Adult Education Budget, the Invest Bristol & Bath and West of England Growth Hub business support services, and a range of strategic sector-based initiatives.

Alongside post graduate degrees in economics and sustainable development, Stephen has over fifteen years’ experience in the field of economic development, both in strategic and delivery focussed roles. In this time, he has successfully designed and implemented a range of high quality and impactful projects, secured significant funding and investment, and delivered positive outcomes for businesses, people and communities.

Victoria Fletcher

Senior Associate, DAC Beachcroft

Victoria is a senior associate specialising in public procurement.

She has over 10 years’ experience advising clients across a range of sectors including health and social care, central and local government, utilities, insurance, technology and real estate.

Her key clients include NHS commissioners and providers, local authorities and private sector bidders.

Victoria advises on all aspects of the procurement process from developing a procurement strategy and drafting documentation through to standstill issues. She has a "hands-on" approach and has managed procurement processes for clients. Victoria also works on contentious procurement matters, bringing and defending procurement challenges. This benefits her non-continuous procurement clients as it gives her insight into areas of potential challenge and an appreciation of legal risk.

Relevant experience includes advising:

• A pathology network in London on a multi-billion pound competitive dialogue procurement process for a fully outsourced service. This included supporting the Trusts throughout the evaluation and moderation process.
• A clinical commissioning group on its procurement for out of hospital services which had a value of over £1 billion and will transform services in that area.
• A private sector provider on how to approach public procurement process which resulted in the provider breaking into the local authority market place.

Victoria is a member of the Procurement Lawyers’ Association.

Lorna Ingwell

Senior Researcher, Tussell

Tussell was founded in 2015 to fill a gap in the market for the provision of useful and reliable information on government contracts and spending. By consolidating trillions of pounds worth of public procurement data into a single platform, Tussell provides an unparalleled vantage point over the UK public procurement landscape.

As Senior Researcher, Lorna’s goal is to accelerate Tussell’s market-leading insight on UK public contracts and spending. Lorna studied Economics at Cardiff University, and has previously worked in Research and marketing for streaming service, Disney+ and Omnicom Media Group.

Georgina Maratheftis

Associate Director | Local Public Services, techUK

Georgina is techUK’s Associate Director for Local Public Services. Georgina works with suppliers that are active or looking to break into the market as well as with councils to create the conditions for meaningful transformation. techUK regularly bring together local authorities and supplier community to horizon scan and explore how the technologies of today and tomorrow can help solve some of the most pressing problems our communities face.

Prior to techUK, Georgina worked for a public policy events company where she managed the policy briefing division and was responsible for generating new ideas for events that would add value to the public sector. Georgina worked across a number of portfolios from education, criminal justice, and health but had a particular interest in public sector transformation and technology. Georgina also led on developing relationships across central and local government.

Gus Tugendhat

Founder, Tussell

Gus leads Tussell, the market’s trusted source of data on UK government contracts. He discovered the power of data when he started his career in investment banking at Lazard and other banks. Then he pivoted to building data-driven businesses, first at Thomson Reuters where he was a Managing Director, and then by founding Tussell. A few years on, Tussell is a high-growth and profitable software business

James Warburton

Senior Associate, DAC Beachcroft

James is a senior associate with experience of advising both public and private sector clients across a wide range of sectors including: technology; real estate services; manufacturing; and healthcare. James typically works on large scale technology outsourcing agreements alongside a variety of other corporate & commercial advisory matters.

James’ recent experience includes:

• Acting for a consortium of local authorities procuring digital services and broadband infrastructure builds across Northern Ireland.
• Supporting one of the UK's largest building societies with the procurement of IT outsourcing services.
• Advising a large public sector body on its procurement of privacy enhancing technology to be applied across its data platforms.

Preparing a suite of software as a service agreements for a Bristol based finance software provider and overhauling the terms and conditions for one of the firm’s blue-chip client’s digital platforms.