Chris has forty years of service within Forensics and Policing. He is a former Director of Forensic Services in London’s Metropolitan Police Service, the largest forensic service provider in the UK and Europe. He led over 1,300 forensic practitioners, scientists and officers, providing a wide range of forensic services from the scene to laboratory to expert evidence in court, for the Met and nationally for counter terrorism policing. The capabilities delivered by his teams included 24/7 crime scene examination, recording and management, Digital Forensics: data acquisition and processing, device examination, CCTV, specialist audio and video; Physical Forensics: recovery, interpretation and reporting of blood and body fluids, firearms examination, legal classification and post mortem and scene ballistic interpretation; Biometrics: fingerprints, biology, DNA, ballistics, imaging, CCTV.

He has had a long and distinguished career within forensics, helping shape Forensic Services for policing London. Originally joining the New Scotland Yard Fingerprint Bureau and becoming a Fingerprint Expert, he achieved competence in crime scene examination, examining scenes of every crime type for over fifteen years. Moving into leadership roles, he held a number of positions on the Senior Leadership Team before becoming Director in 2018.

Whilst Head of the Met’s Laboratory, Chris led the lab to be the first Police Laboratory in England and Wales to attain ISO:17025 accreditation. He also led the Met’s response to the government’s closure of the national Forensic Science Service which resulted in the transfer of 100 forensic scientists into his lab and then consolidating specialist forensic activities into a single site, refurbishing the forensic labs, and building a significant in-house capability including firearms and scientific examinations.

As Director, he was the Senior Accountable Individual (SAI) for the MPS under the Forensic Science Regulator’s Statutory Code, acted as Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for a number of forensic change initiatives that delivered real time services to operational policing, such as the Rapid Drugs Service, Rapid DNA within Custody and a search and review tool for the data extracted from digital devices. Nationally he chaired the Strategic DNA Board on behalf of the Home Office Biometrics Programme and was SRO for the NDNAD2 project which delivered a replacement platform for the National DNA Database with enhanced functionality. This went live in November 2020.

He was the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) Lead for Forensic Quality for three years and in this role worked closely with the statutory Forensic Science Regulator. He was a member of the Forensic Science Regulator’s Advisory Council and sat on a number of other national boards including the UK’s Association of Forensic Science Providers and the UK’s national forensic science strategic leadership group, the Forensic Reform Programme Board.

In 2021 he was elected onto the board of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and served a three-year term. ENFSI is made up of labs from 39 countries and is underpinned by 17 Expert Working Groups. In this role he also represented ENFSI within the International Forensic Strategic Alliance (IFSA), a multilateral partnership between regional networks of operational forensic laboratories across the world.

Chris is a Fellow of the Westminster Abbey Institute which brings together senior leaders from within public service institutions, graduating in 2018, is currently a Board member of the Queensland Forensic Science Advisory Council and is an Assessor for the College of Policing within the police leadership programme.