Our team
John Smith
Associate
John Smith is an economist with a career which spans central government and the privatised water and rail industries, where he spent 12 years as Director of Regulation first with Anglian Water and then at Railtrack. In both cases, he led work on the first price reviews.
He began his career, as a member of the Government Economic Service, working on appraisal of transport projects, including the Channel Tunnel. Subsequently, he worked in local government finance, environmental protection and also on water privatisation.
In 2003, he co-authored a report for Defra and Ofwat into the structure of the water industry, examining the public policy implications of highly geared financial structures. He was also a member of the independent panel set up to review Ofwat’s conduct of the 2004 periodic review.
As a consultant, he has advised publicly-owned water utilities on strategic, regulatory and governance issues.
In 2009, he prepared a paper for the RAC Foundation into governance and administration of the road network, examining how far the regulatory and funding frameworks used for regulated utilities could usefully be applied to roads.
Since 2005, as a member of the Competition Commission, he has worked on a number of merger and market inquiries.
He has particular interests in regulatory systems, governance and incentive structures, and the financing of major infrastructure projects.