Partners
Anna is an independent consultant, who continues to look to collaborate. She is a founding Director of HEdSpace Consulting and has worked jointly with Hugh Jones Consulting.
John Britton
John has worked in education in Wales for over 25 years, including for the Welsh Government body responsible for funding and regulating FE and other post-16 learning in Wales. John was also a governor of a FE College in Wales for nine years and remains a co-opted member of the college Capital Projects Committee. He has a strong understanding of the issues around delivering HE in FE, for example, managing the project to enable Swansea University, in partnership with two FE Colleges, to set up its first franchised-out Foundation Degrees, for budding electrical and mechanical engineers.
In recent years, John was responsible for strategic planning, governance, assurance, legal services, Welsh language translation and compliance, major incident planning, and business intelligence in a £540m turnover university, managing 54 staff. Two major parts of his role were developing the University’s data analysis functions and ensuring that the governance and compliance of the university was effective. John was a member of HESPA’s UK Data Insight Group, working with HEFCW, OfS, DfE, the Student Loans Company and other sector bodies to resolve complex policy and regulation issues.
John has worked in strategic planning for 20 years, leading the development of the strategic plan and its implementation in two universities. In addition to his university roles, John has provided consultancy services to 10 different organisations over the past two years, keeping him well-informed and up to date with the ever-evolving HE environment. He remains a co-opted member of the Welsh University Planners’ Group that works with sector bodies and league table compilers.
He actively shares his insights on HE policy through blogging and tweeting.
Projects include:
- Comprehensive review of academic programme delivery and market opportunities
- Review of student outcomes and experience, advising on strategy and opportunities for further interventions
- Reviewing planning maturity and developing professional services plan
- Information governance review and strategy development
- Development of a Data Quality Assurance Framework
- Evaluation of REF preparation programme
- Governing body effectiveness review
- Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) submission 2023
John’s clients since July 2021 have included: The University of Sussex; The University of Cambridge; The University of Central Lancashire; City Law School; The University of Leeds; Queens University Belfast; Rambert School; Qualifications Wales; The University of York; Cardiff Council.
Many of these were in his role as a Consulting Fellow for Halpin.
Huw Landeg Morris
Huw worked within the central administration of Swansea University for 34 years, overseeing the development of partnerships, including those with FE colleges.
Huw was Academic Registrar for 15 years and Director of Academic Partnerships, before taking early retirement in 2018. He acted as one of UK’s “Bologna Experts”, working for the European Commission on projects to promote international collaboration between universities and was awarded the honneur de chevalier des palmes academiques for his work in promoting French education. Huw was active with the Academic Registrars’ Council, chairing the Appeals and Complaints Practitioners’ Group and with the Office for Independent Adjudicator (member of its Advisory Board).
Huw is a fluent Welsh speaker, and has extensive experience of operating through the medium of Welsh in a professional environment. This includes interviewing participants through the medium of Welsh, and use of Welsh in formal written contexts.
Recently, Huw worked for “Taith” contributing to the work of establishing and launching Wales’ international education exchange programme.
Jan Watkins
Jan Watkins is an experienced project manager, career consultant, educator and researcher. Jan brings expertise from the H.E, Secondary Education, Professional Services, Charity and Commercial sectors.
A resident of Wales for 27 years, Jan has a clear understanding of the benefits of lifelong learning: she started her higher education journey with an undergraduate degree from Aberystwyth University and followed this with postgraduate qualifications from City University, London, the University of South Wales and the University of West of England.
Jan recognizes the vital role that lifelong learning plays in driving both economic prosperity and quality of life for individual citizens. ‘My core beliefs are centred around people, learning and jobs’, Jan says of her career to date. Jan combines a keen current interest in developments in the Welsh Education system, including the new Curriculum for Wales, with skills and perspectives gained from working across a wide range of Welsh and English private and public sector organisations.
Her relevant roles include having been Managing Consultant for the Wales branches of national recruitment and career consultancy organisations, Project Manager for a major international strategic research project in the IT sector, researcher for and author of the first national commercial partnership scheme for Wildlife Trusts Wales, and author of a UK-wide Student Experience audit commissioned by the University of South Wales. She is currently teaching in the specialist provision sector for a local authority in Wales, and has a particular interest in education and careers for neuro-diverse young people and those who are unable to thrive in mainstream education for health reasons.
Jan’s personal interests include rowing for Monmouth Rowing Club and supporting campaigns to address pollution in the rivers Wye and Usk.
Natalie Snodgrass
Founding Director HEdSpace Consulting
Natalie Snodgrass is a development and performance coach, accredited mediator, facilitator, and higher education consultant. She has nearly 20 years’ experience of the UK HE sector spanning governance, legal compliance, strategic planning, academic resourcing, strategic project management, student discipline and wellbeing, and operational change management.
Natalie has managed University-level strategic change programmes including implementation of an institutional CRM system and the development of a coherent framework and strategy for external business and industry relations. As a trained change facilitator she has supported colleagues in driving business change through proven methods of operational process improvement and has also supported institutions through efficiency reviews and teaching quality assessments including the Teaching Excellence Framework.
In her coaching work, Natalie supports clients with a wide range of topics including personal and career development, effective management and leadership, and resilience and wellbeing. Her coaching integrates a wide variety of tools, techniques and approaches grounded not only in traditional behavioural coaching but also career development theory and psychological coaching, and her approach to coaching is simultaneously empathetic, compassionate and challenging. She is known for supporting clients wanting to become more effective in their professional roles and to make the transition into senior management and leadership positions, as well as supporting both individuals and teams through transformational mindset and behavioural change.
Natalie’s key areas of expertise include:
- Strategic project management
- Change management
- Leadership, development and performance coaching
- Building and developing effective teams
- Conflict management and alternative dispute resolution
Nick Dalton
Founding Director HEdSpace Consulting
Nick’s work in HE -across academic departments, HR, student admissions, research finance and estates, has delivered significant cost reductions, a focus on university end-to-end process improvement, reduced operational complexity, and released capacity in teams and processes to handle increased demand. Programmes have included a total review of Professional Services in one Russell Group university, a review of total procurement spend leading to a new category management approach, and a review of the hub and spoke model of HR Business Partners.
Nick’s recent projects have included transformational change programmes with the universities of Warwick, York, Birmingham and Cardiff, which have typically delivered a return on investment of 7:1 and identified £20million of savings, of which £14million has been realised against budget. In addition, capacity benefits equivalent to £2.4million have been identified along with numerous experiential benefits leading to enhanced student experience and improved staff morale.
Nick’s key areas of expertise include:
- Strategic Programme and Project management
- Lean transformation
- Reviews of Professional Services – strategy, structure and operations
- Process improvement
- Facilitation and team development
- Benefits case development
Hugh Jones
Senior Consultant, Hugh Jones Consulting
Hugh Jones is a knowledgeable and engaging HE professional with skills and experience in a wide variety of HE settings.
Hugh has over thirty years’ experience supporting higher education: as a consultant, as a leader of unitary professional services across a whole institution, and within academic services. Prior to establishing Hugh Jones Consulting in February 2014, he was Chief Operating Officer at Cardiff University and Registrar and Secretary at Goldsmiths, University of London, in both of which roles he was Secretary to the governing body. As Academic Registrar, Hugh has led the academic administration at St George’s, University of London; and has led teams spanning the breadth of academic and strategic planning support at City University London. Hugh’s career started at the University of London itself.
As a consultant he has worked with over 40 universities, colleges, students’ unions, sector bodies, and commercial firms, on over 70 distinct projects. He is a trusted advisor.
Hugh has led and advised on transformational change within higher education professional support services, reshaping services to meet changing institutional needs and to meet ever growing service demands and expectations from students and academic colleagues. Specific experience includes:
- Service review, re-organisation and improvement
- Supporting OfS registration
- Governance reviews
- Negotiating, introducing, managing and ending on good terms collaborative provision arrangements, including trans-national education
- Development of quality assurance systems, and successful QAA visits
- Institutional strategic collaborations
- Shared service strategy and development
- Improving employee engagement
- Coaching and mentoring
- Successful negotiation with Trades’ Unions
- Strategic planning and strategic response to changed circumstances
- Strategic oversight of institutional infrastructure projects (estates and IT)
- Developing successful bids and proposals to funders
- Working with Students’ Unions
- Working with professional, statutory and regulatory bodies
- Helping commercial partners engage with the HE sector
Hugh graduated from the London School of Economics in Philosophy, and has an MA in Higher and Professional Education from the Institute of Education, University College London. He is a Fellow of the Association of University Administrators and programme lead for the AUA’s successful postgraduate certificate. Since October 2020 he has been a member of the Board of Governors at Birmingham City University.
