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Who's Who
Dr Caroline Cahm MBE PhD, President Based at Portsmouth.
Caroline is a regular bus user (she doesn’t drive, for which all road users in Portsmouth and Southsea can be eternally grateful!) and has been involved in campaigning for bus passengers since 1981, when she set up a local bus users group in Portsmouth. In 1985 she helped found the National Federation of Bus Users to protect and promote the interests of bus passengers. She has an unfailing conviction that pressure on the industry to provide good services should come from the ‘grass routes’, and has a healthy disdain for pomposity and over-formality. As President (formerly Chairman) of BUS USERS UK she has pioneered the scheme for providing bus users’ surgeries throughout the UK to help develop a constructive dialogue between passengers and the providers of bus services. She also worked with the Confederation of Passenger Transport in setting up the Bus Appeals Body to deal with unresolved complaints in 1999. She devotes almost every waking hour to the cause, but still does so on an entirely voluntary basis. Caroline was awarded an MBE in 1995 for her services to public transport. |
Gavin Booth, Chairman Based in Edinburgh
After a long career in the Scottish Bus Group, latterly as the group's marketing manager, he turned to transport writing and consultancy following the group’s privatisation. He has edited the magazines Buses Focus and Classic Bus and has written or edited some 60 books on buses. A regular bus user, he produced the original Good Practice Guide for BUS USERS UK to encourage bus operators to consider the needs of their passengers on and off their buses. Gavin lives in Edinburgh and is married with two thirty-something children and two grandchildren. He is an Elder of the Church of Scotland and has been known to write and perform in musicals in what little spare time he has left. |
Margaret Everson is Senior Officer Wales for Bus Users UK Cymru. She is also Hon Secretary of the Wales Committee for Wales for The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport (UK) Cymru and organises regular events and conferences across Wales. Previously Margaret worked in National Welsh Omnibus (previously Western Welsh, a subsidiary of the National Bus Company) when it was in the nationalised sector, and then throughout the bus industry privatisation process in 1985/86. Experience in the rail industry started in OPRAF, the government department responsible for delivering the privatisation process as Franchise Manager, followed by what is now Arriva Trains Wales as Compliance Manager, finishing as Stakeholder Liaison Manager for Wales with First Great Western. |
Barclay Davies, Officer for Wales Based at Cardiff.
Barclay joined BUS USERS UK from a finance and administrative background, and yes, he did work for the bank named after him, for 16 years. He took voluntary redundancy from Barclays in September 2000 and took time off to go travelling. During this time he met his wife, who was working for Reebok in Thailand, and he is learning Thai to enable him to communicate better with his Thai family. They have house and a farm in North East Thailand though he doesn’t tell us quite how he intends to commute to Cardiff! He is also learning Welsh to enable BUS USERS UK to offer a bi-lingual service. Barclay is a keen follower of most sports, particularly Rugby, cricket and football. He is an elected committee member of The Co-op Group representing the South Wales area committee, and chair of the Wales Values and Principles committee. Barclay is a keen follower of most sports, particularly Rugby, cricket and football. He is an elected committee member of The Co-op Group representing both the South Wales area committee and the Wales & Borders Regional Board. I’m involved with BUS USERS UK as, when they were alive, both my parents had to struggle to go anywhere, my mother being blind and my father suffering from heart problems’, he says ‘I know how important a reliable and robust bus service is to those without access to a car. Bus users need a strong, independent voice that only an organisation like BUS USERS UK can provide.’ |
Stephen Morris, External Affairs Officer Based in Shepperton, Middlesex.
He become a freelance writer on buses in 2000, after Caroline Cahm agreed to take him on to relieve her of the task of editing the news sheet, Bus Stop Jottings, which he has transformed into the all-colour magazine Bus User. He joined the staff of BUS USERS UK in March 2007, and works 30 hours a week to fit around some other magazine work and his role as an elder of his local church. (Church eldership is not, incidentally, a pre-requisite of being a BUS USERS UK officer!) He continues to edit Bus User and other BUS USERS UK publications, writes press releases and is also BUS USERS UK’s representative on the Bus Appeals Body. He prepares our responses to Parliamentary consultations and with Gavin Booth is involved in discussions with Passenger Focus following its appointment as the Bus Passengers’ Champion. He is married to a Kentish schoolteacher, Heather, and they have a son studying chemistry at London University. When time allows between buses, music and the church (plus, and don’t tell anyone, a Morris Minor), he and the family love to get away from it all to Pembrokeshire to walk and watch birds. |
Stephen le Bras, Treasurer Based in Windsor
After leaving school, he joined an accountancy practice whose senior partner was also a bus enthusiast. After training and passing his exams, he set up his own practice and became part of his local business community in Windsor. He jumped at the chance of becoming a representative of the organisation which safeguarded the interests of bus and train passengers in London and spent four happy years on that committee. During that period, he was introduced to Caroline Cahm who happened to need an honorary treasurer and Stephen was delighted to be chosen. Having recently passed the magic 6-0 (he obtained a free bus pass on his birthday), Stephen is very much involved in the day to day routine of keeping the BUS USERS UK accounting records in shape, whilst continuing with his own practice and taking time out to visit places by bus, whenever he has an opportunity. |
Susan Dawson, Administrator Based in Stoke-on-Trent
Sue has an excellent track record of working in and for the voluntary sector and is a leading light on the North Staffordshire, now West Midlands, Passenger Transport Users Forum, in which role she has been successful in attracting some high-profile transport figures to Stoke-on-Trent where she is based. Married to a painter and decorator and with a son in late teenage, Sue modestly describes herself as ‘attractive, young, slim, 36 year old brunette, with a sense of fun’. |
Bethan Nicole Davies Based in Cardiff Bethan is an European Law graduate from the University of Exeter. She also spent a year studying at the University of Rennes in France, where she obtained a masters in European Law. As a result she is able to speak almost fluently in French and this has given her a love for the French way of life. She is currently taking a gap year before hopefully going back to University to pursue a Diploma in Social work. Bethan has always been a regular bus user, travelling into Cardiff from her local area. This remains the case, where she use 2 buses to get to and from the office each day, which have proven to be very reliable so far. Bethan’s hobbies include going to the gym, travelling and socialising with friends. Also, she is an avid reader and enjoy a wide variety of genres and different writers. This has proved very useful passing the time on her daily bus journeys! She also takes part in a variety of voluntary work in her local area, which she finds really rewarding. |
Nicola Parkins, Administrator and membership secretary Based in Shepperton |
Caroline is a well-known figure throughout the bus world, and is a tireless campaigner for bus and coach passengers. She fills the bus operating industry with a mixture of fear and great respect, but by a non-confrontational approach she has managed to keep many operators ‘on-side’ with us to develop constructive dialogue. As a result the industry does sit up and take notice when it needs to.
Since May 2005 Gavin Booth has been Chairman of BUS USERS UK, with a particular involvement in matters affecting bus users in his native Scotland.
Margaret Everson, Senior officer for Wales
Barclay is the first full-time paid BUS USERS UK officer in Wales, and runs BUS USERS UK’s office in Cardiff, which is commercially rented from Cardiff Bus. He provides advice to bus users and other agencies in Wales and handles users’ complaints. He also plans and organises the surgery programme in Wales and he is involved in strategy and policy and in raising the profile of the organisation in Wales.
Although Stephen Morris is based in Shepperton, just west of London, he considers himself a Mancunian, having been brought up in Manchester. A keen amateur musician, he studied music at London University, and plays the bassoon and sings tenor — indeed he and Gavin Booth do a formidable double act. But his career took a very different path when, following a lifelong interest in, and use of, buses, he joined Ian Allan Publishing to edit Buses magazine in 1979.
Stephen Le Bras was born in Portsmouth, though a little before BUS USERS UK was set up there. His interest in buses seems to have arisen at an early age when he noticed the local transport passing his pram and resolved to find out more!
Sue Dawson joined BUS USERS UK in 2007 to set up our headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent after we moved from our previous address in Portsmouth.
BUS USERS UK,
PO Box 2950, Stoke on Trent, ST4 9EW, UKT 01782 442855F
01782 442856E
enquiries@bususers.org
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