Elected on 2 May 2024, Police and Crime Commissioner John Tizard has vast experience of representing communities in Bedfordshire where he has lived for almost 50 years.

As well as holding leadership roles in numerous businesses, charities, and public sector organisations, John served as a councillor for 18 years.

For most of this time, he was leader of the Labour group of councillors on the former Bedfordshire County Council. He was also a joint leader of the Council for some of this period.

John is driven by his commitment to social justice and his belief that governance and behaviour are essential for any organisation to fulfil its mission and maximise its impact and has held local government posts nationally and in Europe.

John’s career includes senior leadership roles in the business sector where he held a senior strategic executive role in a FTSE 100 company for many years. He has had non-executive director experience in several start up and social businesses.

He has had leadership experience in charities both as a senior executive at what is now Scope and as a trustee and chair of several charities.

He is currently a trustee of Bedfordshire based Making Me which enables young people to thrive by equipping them to navigate their mental and emotional journey into adulthood and is Chair of Action Space a London based Arts Council sponsored arts organisation which enables and promotes the right of artists with learning difficulties.

John established and led research centres at the University of Birmingham and London South Bank University both of which specialised in public sector collaboration and partnerships between the public, business, and voluntary and community sectors.

More recently John has advised organisations and leaders in the business, charity, social and public sectors in the UK and internationally on subjects such as leadership, governance, public service reform, procurement, and insourcing.

He regularly writes, commentates, and speaks on these and related issues in this country and internationally. He has been an evaluator in the European Public Service Awards programme since 2015.

He has written for a variety of publications and has, in the past few years, authored reports for the Fabian Society, the TUC and Unison on topics including reforming public sector audit, outsourcing, and insourcing of public services, and strengthening workers’ rights.

Some of his key areas of interest include community engagement, tackling anti-social behaviour, hate crime, cyber-crime, knife crime, reducing crime against women and children, and investing in prevention methods to tackle the causes of crime.

John is passionate about social justice, equity, equality, high standards in public life and human rights. He will draw on his values and his political and professional experiences as Police and Crime Commissioner.