Senior Leadership Team

Sarah O’Neill has over 25 years’ experience working in consumer policy and advocacy. She is a non-practising solicitor with experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors.  She holds an MBA and is an accredited mediator.

Her current and previous roles include:

• Legal member (Tribunal chair), First-tier Tribunal for Scotland - Housing and Property Chamber and Social Security Chamber
• Board member, Scottish Legal Aid Board
• Independent consumer and legal policy consultant
• Lecturer in Dispute Resolution in the Consumer Dispute Resolution Centre, Queen Margaret University
• Director of Policy and Solicitor at Consumer Focus Scotland

Jill has over 15 years of experience working in the Scottish Government and civil service. She holds a strong knowledge of the Scottish consumer landscape having most recently led on Consumer Policy, the creation of Consumer Scotland and response to the energy price crisis in the Scottish Government.

Prior to this role, Jill has also:

• Led teams focussing on Scotland’s energy strategy and sponsorship of Scotland’s enterprise bodies
• Held the role of private secretary within Scottish ministerial offices

Eleanor Mullan is an experienced intelligence analyst, having spent fifteen years working in law enforcement, including consumer protection.

Before working for Consumer Scotland, her roles included:

• Providing intelligence for various Scottish police forces, primarily focused on serious and organised crime and including secondments to leadership positions
• Developing a newly created role of Tactical Analyst for Trading Standards Scotland, improving the tactical intelligence analyst support available for consumer protection investigations at both the intelligence development and evidential phases
• Senior Policy Advisor for the Scottish Government focused on inward investment where she was responsible for policy around improving Scotland’s ecosystem to attract inward investment

Andrew Denholm spent a career working in newspaper journalism in Scotland before moving into communications with the Scottish Government.

Before taking on his current position his roles included:

• Education Correspondent for The Herald newspaper from 2005 to 2019
• Home Affairs Correspondent and Scottish Political Correspondent for The Scotsman newspaper between 2000 and 2005
• Senior Reporter for the Press Association covering news and current affairs across Scotland

Between 2019 and 2022 Andrew worked as a Senior Media Manager for the Scottish Government with responsibility for a range of policy areas including Brexit, the Economy, Justice and COVID-19.

Kate Morrison has worked in consumer policy since 2014 covering a range of areas including fuel poverty, heat networks and financial support. Before taking on her current role she worked for Citizens Advice Scotland. 

In addition to her current position Kate is also:

• a special advisor to the Board of Energy Action Scotland
• a member of the SSEN Powering Customers to Net Zero Group
• chair of Consumer Scotland’s Rural Energy Consumers group

Kate started her career in community sustainability projects and held the housing brief at COSLA on a secondment in 2019.

Craig McClue is a qualified trading standards officer with a wealth of experience in consumer protection investigations, consumer law, and policy.

In his previous role as Head of Policy for the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, Craig led the profession through the significant changes to trading standards law and regulation brought about by Brexit.

Craig's previous roles also include:

• Principal Investigator with Trading Standards Scotland 
• Principal Policy Adviser at the Competition and Markets Authority, where he worked to shape the new consumer enforcement powers in the forthcoming Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act

Tracey Reilly has a wealth of experience of working across policy and legal issues and scrutinising delivery of services in Scotland.

Her previous roles include:

• Policy Manager, Strong Communities, at Citizens Advice Scotland
• Senior Policy Officer, Food Poverty, at the Scottish Government
• Clerk and Complaints Investigator at the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission
• Committee Clerk for the Justice, Public Audit and Rural Development Committees at the Scottish Parliament

Prior to joining Consumer Scotland, Jane was a Senior Lecturer in Dispute Resolution and Law at Queen Margaret University. 

Jane is a qualified Trading Standards Officer and was previously a Divisional Manager in Edinburgh. 

Jane has completed a number of funded research and consultancy projects and her work has been widely published.  Her most recent research focused on:

• Consumer experiences of complaint handling 
• Alternative dispute resolution
• Vulnerable consumers
• The impact of being complained about

Jane was a consumer representative on the Scottish Civil Justice Council and a member of their Access to Justice Committee. She previously chaired the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission’s Consumer Panel

Gail Walker has a wealth of experience working in the water industry in Scotland representing the needs of consumers across a wide range of issues.

Before taking up her current post her roles included Water Policy Team Manager within the Consumer Futures Unit at Citizens Advice Scotland.

Before this Gail worked in strategic and operational project management across a number of industries including:

• third world development in Malawi
• pensions and insurance
• supply chain management
• the NHS

In 2008 Gail established a community action group engaging with local government and other organisations to address local flooding.