Our executive leadership team brings experience and expertise from energy, government, telecoms and industry. They are passionate about delivering the best outcomes for our customers, colleagues and country.
The Board
Board members
Richard McCarthy
Richard joined Capita's Local Government, Health and Property Division as Executive Director for Central Government in February 2012. Prior to this, he was the Director General, Neighbourhoods, at the Department for Communities and Local Government and their lead official for housing, planning, regeneration, local economies, climate change, building standards and the European Regional Development Fund.
Neil Smith
Neil was appointed as Interim Chief Financial Officer in January 2024 and as a member of the Board in June 2024. Prior to joining DCC, Neil spent over 10 years with Vodafone initial as their Finance Director for Internet of Things and subsequently Finance Director for Vodafone Global Enterprise. Prior to that Neil spent 12 years with BT after qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. Neil is an experienced finance director in the technology and telecommunications industry. His proven strength in commercial and financial leadership is driving DCC’s focus on value for money.
Barbara Anderson
Barbara is currently a Non-Executive Director and Chair of Audit and Risk at Sovereign Housing Association, Non Executive Director for BSC2 VCT and a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Remuneration Committee of British Business Bank and in addition this year she has been appointed Chair of Saffron Building Society. Her expertise includes innovation, growth and sustainability, strategic planning, start-up acceleration, business transformation, deal preparation and corporate governance.
Ian McCaig
Ian is a Board member and Senior Independent Director at M-Kopa Ltd, Non-Executive Chair of Lumon Holdings Ltd, and a Board Member at the Wesleyan Assurance Society. He is also Non-Executive Chair of Powerverse Investments Limited. In his executive career, he was most recently CEO of First Utility, the largest independent energy provider in the UK and a pioneer in smart-metering technology and energy analytics, which was acquired by Shell at the end of 2017. Prior to that, he was CEO of lastminute.com. His early career was in the IT industry at ICL before moving into telecommunications and spending a number of years at Nokia.
Sarah Eccleston
Sarah joined the DCC Board in September 2022 in her first Non-Executive role after a 30-year career in IT Networking. Sarah has since been appointed to Non-Executive Director roles at 3 NASDAQ-listed companies in Sweden – Telia Company, NCAB Group and Tobii. In her executive career, Sarah was most recently a Global Vice President for Cisco. Originally a software engineer, Sarah has wide-ranging experience in the industry, gained in a variety of engineering, sales, and leadership positions with global technology vendors and service providers including Nortel Networks and Verizon. At Cisco, Sarah previously led the Internet of Things (IOT) and Networking practices for UK and Ireland; for Cisco globally, she was Chief Technology Officer for the Small and Mid-Size business sectors.
Gemma Bate-Williams
Gemma joined the DCC Board in February 2024. She is a UK Certified Chartered Accountant Gemma is a Divisional Finance Director at Capita, where she qualified as a chartered accountant and has held various Finance roles since joining as a Graduate in 2001. Gemma holds several Capita subsidiary directorships including Capita One Limited, Capita Business Services Ltd, Capita Managed IT Solutions Limited and Contact Associates Limited.
Nadia Choudhary
Nadia has an expansive knowledge of Commercial, Procurement, Public Sector Regulations, Risk Management, Corporate Governance, Deal Negotiations and Dispute Management. Nadia joined Capita in January 2023 from the Department of Work and Pensions as the Commercial Director. She was previously a Senior Civil Servant at the Cabinet Office, leading the Disputes Practice across Central Government. Her earlier experience extends into the IT and Telecoms sectors.
The Executive Committee
ExCo members
Colin Sempill
Colin joined DCC as Interim CEO in September 2024, with extensive experience from the energy and telecoms sectors. Most recently, Colin was Enterprise Telecoms Managing Director for SSE, then CEO of Neos Networks for nine years. He is currently Chairman at Lanes Infrastructure and an advisor on fibre deployment for a US Rail Operator. Colin is a qualified accountant with previous transformation and strategy roles with Accenture and Ernst & Young.
Gaynor Fisher
Gaynor has over 20 years’ experience in leading People Teams, predominantly in the telecoms and retail industry. Previous employers include Vodafone, Telefonica O2, Dixons Carphone and Kingfisher Group where she had responsibility for Board-level Business Partnering, People Strategy and Programmes, People Transformation Leadership and Talent strategy. Most recently, Gaynor has excelled in HR consulting roles within the Public sector and Financial Services most recently working with Legal & General.
Karin Meurk-Harvey
Karin has an international background in engineering, technology and telecoms spanning over 30 years. She joined DCC from Vodafone, where she spent five years as their Global Vice President of Commercial for IoT, Cloud and Security. Karin was appointed to the Rotork plc board in 2021, adding commercial expertise particularly in high-growth markets. Between 1996 and 2013, Karin held a number of senior roles with Ericsson and has also served as a Non-Executive Director of Korala Associates Ltd, a privately-owned ATM software business.
Ian Speller
Ian joined the Smart DCC Security team in 2018 and assumed the role of Director of Security in 2019. Before joining Smart DCC he spent many years in IT, specialising in security for the past 17 years. During that period he has gained extensive experience in security management working for a range of large organisations operating a variety of sectors including Service, Insurance, Manufacturing and Telecommunications.
Stève Hervouet
Stève has 23 years of professional experience in regulated utilities, both in the UK and overseas. He joined DCC in 2021 as Chief Strategy and Regulation Officer, and before this, his previous role was Director of Strategy and Regulation at Affinity Water (the largest water-only company in the UK). He also worked at Water Plus, a JV between United Utilities and Severn Trent, and the largest water retailer in the UK. Stève also worked for Sembcorp Utilities, a $5bn Singaporean based utility operating globally in Asia, Europe and America. Before this, Stève held senior roles in the water sector in Latin America.
Penny Brown
Before joining DCC in 2018, Penny held a number of senior roles at British Telecom. Her career and experience spans more than 20 years in telecoms, focused on successfully leading large operational teams through complex transformation and growth. More recently, amongst other responsibilities, Penny has led DCC’s work to migrate millions of first-generation (SMETS1) smart meters.
Ed Hurford
Ed is leading a programme that will transform DCC from a single programme project to a business that reliably delivers multiple programmes while supporting a resilient service with millions of end users. Ed previously spent 13 years at British Gas in a variety of leadership roles. Most recently he was Director of Smart Metering Infrastructure. Ed was involved in the British Gas smart metering programme from start-up to volume deployment of SMETS1, and was responsible for the British Gas SMETS2 programme as well as implementing commercial metering contracts and developing the future smart metering operating model. Ed also has previous experience in management consulting, and in upstream oilfield services with Schlumberger.
Neil Smith
Neil was appointed as Interim Chief Financial Officer in January 2024 and as a member of the Board in June 2024. Prior to joining DCC, Neil spent over 10 years with Vodafone initial as their Finance Director for Internet of Things and subsequently Finance Director for Vodafone Global Enterprise. Prior to that Neil spent 12 years with BT after qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. Neil is an experienced finance director in the technology and telecommunications industry. His proven strength in commercial and financial leadership is driving DCC’s focus on value for money.
Siobhan Stanger
Siobhan leads DCC’s work to support the renewal of DCC’s licence to operate. The new licence will define the scope of DCC’s work and set out the regulatory framework in which it will operate. Prior to leading this programme, Siobhan led the strategy and regulatory affairs team in DCC. Before joining DCC in December 2018, Siobhan worked in the civil service for 16 years in a number of different Departments including the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Department for International Development. She has experience of designing multi million pound government programmes, strategy development, stakeholder engagement and delivering legislative change.
Further reading
