https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/podcast/episode/women-in-transport/laura-thomas/ Useful Links Consul-T www.consul-t.co.uk Transcript DfBB Women in Transport Podcast Annie: Welcome to the Driving for Better Business podcast celebrating women working in transport, fleet management, and road safety. And today I’m very pleased to introduce Laura Thomas, not only the Director of Consul-T, but also an award-winning leading lawyer, who has advised the government on road safety, has worked for the HSE, and also as a Deputy Traffic Commissioner. Laura, welcome to our podcast. Now, I’ve given a brief introduction to the work you’ve done, but actually your experience is really broad. Can you tell us a little more about it? Laura: Thanks Anne-Marie. So you’re right, I have not had perhaps the straightest of career paths, but I think the winding ones are probably more interesting. So, I am a barrister – I started life as a criminal barrister, in chambers in London. I then joined a law firm, where I was for 12 years as a barrister and then partner. And I founded their regulatory and Health and Safety corporate defence team. And now, having spent a couple of years working in industry in leadership roles – in oil and gas, in civil engineering – I now work with businesses in two different strands. Firstly, as Director of Consul-T – and Consul-T offers business consultancy services, mainly in the Health and Safety field, but also regulatory, ESG, risk and compliance. And I also do legal work – still as a self-employed barrister at the Chambers of Laura Thomas, where I focus predominantly on Health and Safety and transport work. Annie: Excellent, thank you. I can just see now all the work that you’re involved in there. And you’ve got a unique insight into the road safety aspect of that. What led you into getting involved in the road safety and transport side of things? Laura: Yes, it’s an interesting one. And if I’m honest, I think I kind of fell into road transport and safety. I know a lot of people say it, but the transport world found me. I think early in my career I remember going to a talk by the inspirational and wonderful Carole Walker, who is the former CEO of Hermes. And I remember she said exactly the same. She said nobody really leaves school thinking they want to work in transport and road safety, but it kind of sucks you in. And I love that about it, really. There’s always so much to learn in the transport and road safety world. You can never say you’ve learnt it all. I was then really fortunate to sit on the board of Logistics UK with Carole. And she was a huge inspiration to me. I think in my world as a criminal barrister I saw the really tragic side of road safety. I dealt with many horrendous fatalities and serious incidents on the roads, both from a health and safety perspective and a road traffic law perspective. And I wanted to understand more. So, I had the opportunity and was invited onto the Road Haulage Association Panel, and I started to do legal inquiries for the Traffic Commissioner. Although I have to admit, Anne-Marie, tachographs did and still do puzzle me! I was then appointed Deputy Traffic Commissioner and I held that role for two and a half years. My goodness, I learnt so much about road safety and the transport world sitting as Deputy Traffic Commissioner. I met some wonderful people, and it led also to some really interesting work. So I then went on to advise the government, on their high-profile Cycle Safety Review. So I think – also if I take into account my private life, riding horses on roads – I think I have experience with transport in every single form. And still to this day, I’m engaged and enthused by it all the time because it’s one area that we’ve really got to get right. Annie: Absolutely. You mentioned that you had your eyes opened when you just started working in road safety, especially looking at the legal side of things, the horrendous things that happen on the road. And I think one of the things that we don’t realise is that because we use the roads in some shape or form every day, we don’t see the risks. Because most of us will get through the day without seeing something horrendous happening. So in our brains, we get the idea that the roads aren’t a dangerous place. But most collisions are avoidable. And I think this is why people in road safety are so passionate – because there is so much we can do to reduce toll on the road, it’s within our gift to do that. There’s a lot of human error and involvement in road safety. But actually, there’s a lot that we can do to prevent these things happening. As Deputy Traffic Commissioner, how did you engage with stakeholders and the industry to improve that and have real accountability? Laura: Yes, well, interestingly as you know, the Deputy Traffic Commissioners work with large-goods vehicles and passenger vehicles. Which, as you’ll appreciate, I used to say to ...
