Dame Julie Mellor, DBE

Julie took up the post of Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in January 2012.  The role of the Ombudsman is to consider complaints that government departments, a range of other public bodies in the UK, and the NHS in England, have not acted properly or fairly or have provided a poor service. The Ombudsman provides an independent, high quality complaint handling service that rights individual wrongs, drives improvement in public services and informs public policy.

Prior to this role Julie led pwc's health consulting practice in London and their Forward Thinking research programme -  working with politicians and opinion formers across the public sector to contribute pwc's expertise and insight to tackling today's and tomorrow's public sector challenges.

She joined pwc in 2005 following a successful seven years as Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) where she is creditred with transforming a failing public body into one rated as very effective by 90 percent of opinion formers. During her time as Chair the organisation succeeded in getting equal pay back on to the national agenda and persuaded government to introduce paternity leave, flexible working regulations and parental leave. Prior to this Julie's career was in human resources spanning banking, oil and gas and local government.

She has contributed to several public sector boards, e.g. the board for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and public, trade and voluntary bodies focused on social justice, e.g. Commission for Racial Equality, Employers Forum on Disability and the Fatherhood Institute.