Pluss' Board of Directors

Pluss is owned by Devon County Council, Plymouth City Council, Somerset Council and Torbay Council. 

Pluss is controlled and supervised through our Board of Directors. Each of our four local authority owners has at least one board member to ensure their interests are represented. We also have a number of independent directors:

Chris Harvey - Chair
Chris Harvey is an experienced Financial Director, having spent most of his working life in the Print and Packaging industries.  He is now semi-retired and owns a farm in Devon breeding Angus cattle.  He is also a Non-Executive Director of Arcadia Housing, a major Housing Association.

Chris has an Oxford Degree in Law, is a member of the Chartered Institute of Accountants of England and Wales and sits on their Investigation Committee.  He was involved with Pluss from its inception and was the Company Financial Advisor leading much of the negotiations with the (then) three Member Authorities.

Steve Graham OBE - Vice Chair
Steve served for 36 years in the Royal Navy filling a wide range of sea-going and shore appointments, his last being as a Commodore and Chief Executive of Portsmouth Naval Base. On retiring from the Navy in 2000, he took up a post with the newly forming Commission for Health Improvement as, first, Director of Operations and, subsequently, as Director of Corporate Services following a re-organisation with the expansion of the role of the Commission. In this latter post, he was responsible for the Commission’s HR, strategic and business planning, corporate and legal governance, and
property services.

Now semi-retired, Steve’s background is as a chartered marine engineer. He still works part time as part of an aid funded social care project in central Russia in which he is currently acting as a business mentor to a Russian partner and he is also in a partnership providing project management consultancy.

Steve joined Pluss when it became an independent company having been enthused by the imaginative concept of the organisation and the challenges it faces.

Councillor Christine Lawrence (Somerset)
Christine Lawrence is a retired company secretary who has lived and worked in West Somerset for over 35 years.

Christine is the Somerset County Council Cabinet Member for Community with responsibilities which include adult social care and learning disabilities services. Christine is also one of the County Council’s representatives on the Exmoor National Park Authority. Christine is passionate about supporting care for the elderly, people with disabilities and for carers in our community.  Christine has been involved with Pluss for many years and was appointed as Somerset County Council’s Director Representative in 2009.

Christine is married with three grown-up sons.

Councillor Cindy Stocks (Torbay)
Councillor Stocks has been a Councillor Representative on the Industrial Services Group (now Pluss) Joint Committee since 2003 and has been appointed as Torbay Council’s Director Representative.  She also serves in the Groundwork South West Area and is a Board member of Torbay Care Trust.

Councillor Stocks worked for Devon Social Services and, after gaining a Degree in Social Sciences, worked as a further education tutor.  Her areas of expertise are with adult returners and students with physical and learning disabilities.  In 1999, she spent a short time delivering a basic skills pilot course to Industrial Services Group employees in Exeter and Barnstable.

Since elected to Torbay Council in 2003, Councillor Stocks devotes herself to being a full-time Councillor, and her outside body interests are centred around supporting and enabling people with disabilities to gain as much independence and control of their lives as possible. Councillor Stocks was the first appointed Director of Pluss and is very happy to still hold that post.

Councillor Bernard Hughes OBE (Devon)
Awaiting biography

Jill Read
Jill has worked in the disability field for a number of years.  She gained a degree in Education while teaching on and managing a Youth Training Programme for disadvantaged young people in Oxford.  More recently she managed a residential rehabilitation centre for blind and partially sighted people in Torquay.  She has been a member of the Chartered Institute of Management and the Professional Association of Teachers.  She lives in Torbay and is currently working as the Diversity Officer for Teignbridge District Council.

Jim Payne
Jim is an experienced Company Director, having served on the Boards of British and American public, private and voluntary sector organisations.

Following a student apprenticeship at Brush Electrical Engineering, where he qualified with an HNC in Electrical Engineering, Jim went to sea for a period as a Merchant Seaman and later became a Company Representative in South Africa and the United States.  He served for a period in the Diplomatic Corps as Vice Council Commercial in California.

More recently, he has been a Director of a number of manufacturing companies and in 2002 was South West Director of Horwood International, with responsibility for carrying out the initial review of the Industrial Services Group.  He has also been involved in consultancy work with other Workstep and Supported Employment providers and has considerable knowledge of employment programmes for people with disabilities.