Panel Members

Robert McKellar (professional member)

Rob is a Licensed Conveyancer, Chartered Legal Executive and Unregistered Barrister. He has practised conveyancing professionally since 2010 and has additional legal experience in practising commercial litigation, data protection, regulatory compliance and employment law.  Since 2013, Rob has worked in leadership roles within the conveyancing sector, and has headed a number of practices ranging from start-ups and SMEs to large corporates. His duties have included being CLC approved Head of Legal Practice and a CLC approved Manager.

Rob has served on the CLC Adjudication Panel since 2019 and has additional quasi-judicial experience having served as an elected councillor on Local Authority Planning and Licensing Committees.

Gillian Seagar (lay member)

Gillian has held management positions with regulators such as the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Bar Standards Board. Former roles also include Lay Fitness to Practise Panel Member for the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service and the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Gillian currently has several regulatory roles. These include Lay Case Examiner for the General Optical Council, Disciplinary Assessor for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Lay Member of the Investigations Panel for the Architects Registration Board and Lay Chair for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Regulatory Tribunal. She sits as a magistrate in the criminal and family court.

Isobel Leaviss (lay member)

Isobel studied Economics and began her career at the Bank of England before joining Goldman Sachs as a credit analyst covering financial institutions (UK and emerging markets) and equity derivatives. She then became Chief of Staff at the London Development Agency which delivered economic development and regeneration investment projects across London. Isobel worked on the London Olympic bid and co-ordinated the land assembly and relocations for the Olympic Park. Isobel was appointed as the Bar Standards Board’s Independent Observer and has scrutinised the operation of their complaints and disciplinary system for over five years.

She now has a portfolio of professional regulatory decision making roles including being a lay disciplinary tribunal panel member for the General Pharmaceutical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and an adjudicator for the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Isobel served as a independent non-executive Director for the National Housing Federation for six years and is now a lay observer for the Society of Radiographers and a member of their Patient Advisory Group.

John Jones (professional member)

John qualified as a Chartered Legal Executive in 1987 and a Licensed Conveyancer in 1988. He is also a Licensed Probate Practitioner. He is the Head of Residential Property at Jackson Lees Solicitors in Liverpool. He served as a professional member on the Board of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers from 2009 to 2017. He currently sits as a professional member of the CILEx Regulation Admissions & Licensing Committee, and as a professional member of the CLC Adjudication Panel. Until recently, he was also an External Verifier for the SQA, which supervises the CLC Conveyancing and Probate training qualifications

Paul Brooks (lay member)

Paul has a background in private equity investment and venture capital. During his career, he has worked extensively with lawyers. In addition to being a lay member of the CLC’s Adjudication Panel, he the lay chair of the Investigation Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, having previously chaired its Disciplinary Committee. He also is the chair of the
Joint Disciplinary Panel of IPReg, the regulatory body for patent and trade mark attorneys. He therefore has considerable experience of professional regulation and disciplinary matters.
Paul is a justice of the peace, sitting in Central London, where he is a presiding magistrate.

Helen Riley (lay member)

Helen is a chartered surveyor and worked in the commercial property industry for over 25 years. She was a partner at Weatherall Green and Smith and latterly a senior director at BNP Paribas Real Estate with responsibility for senior relationships with multinational corporate clients such as IBM, Barclays and News Corp. This included managing national and international teams to deliver a range
of property services on large complex portfolios.

Helen now holds a range of professional regulatory roles. These include roles with: Investigation Panel, Architects Registration Board (ARB); Investigation Panel, Landscape Institute; Disciplinary Committee, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA);  the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) and  the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS). She was Vice-Chair of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Regulatory Tribunal and its Steering Committee for several years, where she also sat as a professional member and panel chair for disciplinary, registration and appeal hearings.  She volunteers for the Field Studies Council, has been vice-chair of governors at a community primary school, chair/director of a London-based social enterprise, and a trustee for a small charity working in southern Africa

Catherine Fewings (professional member)

Catherine qualified as a solicitor in 1993 where she started her conveyancing career in a medium
sized firm. She became a CLC Licence holder in 1997 and continued her career in a national volume firm in a management and compliance role focusing on risk and legal training. She went on to establish her own Licensed Conveyancer practice in 2005 to run an innovative small firm with high levels of legal expertise with a strong customer focus.

Andrew Hudson (lay member)

Originally qualifying as an Environmental Health officer, Andy spent 35 years in Local Government throughout which time he gained a first-class Honours degree in Law, a post graduate Advanced Diploma in Planning & Environmental law, and finally an MBA, before retiring in 2010 as Assistant Director for Regulatory Services. The following year he was appointed Chief Executive of his local Citizens Advice Bureau, and during his 6 years of tenure, also sat as Lay Governing Body member of his local Clinical Commissioning Group, chairing a number of delegated Committees.

Having also sat as a Lay member of the Professional Conduct Panel of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives for 7 years, Andy is currently a Lay member of the Examination Appeals panel for the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, and an Independent Lay Assessor for the Royal College of Physicians, undertaking accreditation assessments in Hospitals throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland for a number of clinical specialisms including Endoscopy, Liver Services, Immunology, Allergy and Pulmonary Rehabilitation. Until recently Andy was trustee and Vice Chair of Citizens Advice North Yorkshire and a trustee of the Wilf Ward family trust, a charity which provides accommodation and supported living for adults in Yorkshire with profound learning and physical disabilities.

Victoria Goodfellow (Adjudication Panel Chair)

The panel is independent of the CLC.