Meet the team

Assistant Chief Constable Becky Riggs

Becky has 32 years of policing experience, beginning her service as a Cadet at just 17 years old.

Becky joined Staffordshire Police in January 2023 and currently has responsibility for force crime and specialist investigation teams such as Child Protection, Rape and Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO), Exploitation, Serious and Organised Crime and Major Crime. She has a real passion for delivering specialist teams and investigations to ensure vulnerable people are protected, especially children.

Becky is immensely proud of being selected as the new national lead for Child Protection and Abuse Investigation and is excited to begin her work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Richard Fewkes

Richard has been the Director of the National Police Chiefs Council Hydrant Programme (formerly Operation Hydrant) since 2014.  

The programme was originally established in to coordinate the national response to the rise in reports of non-recent child sexual abuse and to improve policing’s approach to its investigation. In 2015, the Programme was given responsibility for managing the NPCC relationship with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and to coordinate the gathering and submission of evidence to the Inquiry.  

More recently Hydrant extended its remit to develop policing’s strategy across all elements of the child protection and abuse investigation portfolio.  

Richard was previously a police officer, latterly the Head of Major Crime and Public Protection in South Yorkshire. His police career spanned over 30 years, the majority of which saw him in senior leadership roles within CID.

Pete Hornby

Pete is the Deputy Director for the Hydrant Programme, having joined the team back in 2018. He is responsible for all aspects of the services delivered by the programme and leads the Learning, Peer Review and Peer Support and Debrief process.  

Prior to joining Hydrant, Pete worked in the Safeguarding Command at Norfolk Constabulary where he managed the MASH, RSO, DA, FGM, FM and IIOC teams and previously managed the Child Abuse, Adult Abuse and Rape investigation Teams. Prior to that he was the Director of Intelligence. 

Pete retired from being a career detective after completing 30 years’ of service with Norfolk constabulary. He is a trained PIP 3 SIO but is also a qualified child death SIO, kidnap and extortion SIO, Authorising Officer and is review and debrief trained. 

Pete is a family man whose wife and children all work in Drug and Alcohol support services, the National Probation Service, and the NHS. He relaxes by walking his dog Lindy or riding his motorbike. 

Claire Stanley

Claire Stanley has over 20 years’ experience in the media and public sector communications working in both policing as well as local and national NHS organisations. As a former journalist Claire has worked at several national radio stations as well as at the BBC, and delivered media training and consultancy advice to high profile festivals.

Claire currently oversees communications for three national policing programmes, supporting a number of NPCC portfolios delivering across the vulnerability spectrum. These include the Hydrant Programme, the Tackling Organised Exploitation programme (TOEX), and the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP).  Her team act as a centre of expertise, supporting colleagues in police forces across the complex investigations and operations within this business area with formal advice via Gold groups or Peer Reviews, or acting as a critical friend informally.

With a passion for crisis communications, stakeholder engagement and consultation, Claire strives to ensure that communications approaches are inclusive and representative of all.

Claire is kept on her toes out of work by her partner, toddler son and miniature sausage dog Digby. She loves family walks, time in the gym and travelling whenever she can.

Angie Jones

Angie has significant experience within policing, having worked in major investigation, kidnap and extortion, telecommunications analysis. She has also spent time as a tactical and strategic analyst at force and within the NCA in London.  

Angie has been part of Hydrant since its inception in 2015 and manages the Research & Analysis business function with the support of a Senior Analyst and a Senior Researcher along with a team of nine Analysts and Researchers. The team provide a number of functions around national CSAE analysis and research capability, collating data in order to address national crime data integrity and accuracy, presenting current national positions for forces and trends in cases within the Hydrant Programme remit.  

Angie lives in Yorkshire with her husband, daughter and Waffle the dog. A true Netflix watcher, Sauvignon drinker with a determination to master the ‘rise of the Yorkshire pudding’ within her oven one day! 

Rob McKinnell

Rob joined the Hydrant team as the Operational Coordinator for Hydrant in June 2019 after over 30 years’ service with Nottinghamshire Police.  

During his career with Notts Rob gained significant experience in a range of disciplines including Modern Slavery, Intelligence and the investigation of serious and complex crime including Homicide within the force area and the East Midlands region. During his later service years, he was part of the public protection senior management team and SIO for a large-scale child abuse investigation across multiple children’s care home settings. 

Rob now manages the Learning, Review and Peer support team which has three review officers and a review assistant. He and his team deliver CPD events to all forces as well as reviews, peer support and a debrief function to any investigations within the child protection and abuse investigation portfolio. Additionally, through their engagement with forces they also capture promising practice for national policing and produce the SIO/investigator advice and guidance documents. 

Tracey Watkinson

Tracey has a master's degree in child protection and adult safeguarding, and even though she is no longer in the legal field, her legal knowledge helps safeguarding partners fulfil their legal obligations and advances national agendas and learning on safeguarding.

To ensure that the safeguarding policing response is as informed as possible and that survivors and victims are helped at every stage, partnership engagement and cooperative working are essential.

In addition to serving as a theme lead for the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce, Tracey's responsibilities include partnership engagement throughout the third sector to inform policing responses to child welfare and sexual abuse investigations and is the conduit for referring partner organisations and national policing regarding complex safeguarding referrals.

Along with her husband, two cats, and dog Bob, Tracey resides in Devon. Tracey likes to make simple meals, go on walks with Bob, and dance to the radio.

Sue Gladwin

Sue is an experienced Office Manager and has worked in policing for over 24 years. She joined the Hydrant Programme in July 2023, after spending the previous 5 years working as Office Manager for the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner.

Sue is responsible for providing a comprehensive administrative and finance support function to the programme and supports the Director and his Senior Management Team to ensure governance, strategic planning, project coordination and collaboration with other NPCC areas of business are managed effectively.

Sue loves spending family time together and being outdoors as much as possible, in the garden or on long walks with her dog.

Amanda Tankard

Amanda is an experienced HR professional with specialist expertise in employee relations and change management. Having extensive experience as a Grievance Resolution Officer, Mediator and Welfare Officer.  Amanda has significant experience within policing, having worked in a variety of people roles with responsibility for staff and officers within Professional Standards, Specialist Crime Services, Business Change and the Force Control Room.   

Amanda has been with the Hydrant Programme since November 2020 and provides generalist people management guidance, advice and coaching support to the Director and Deputy Director of the Hydrant Programme and the wider team within the framework of policy, procedure and legislation to ensure a high quality, consistent, relevant, proactive HR Service in line with the strategic direction of the programme.

Amanda lives with her partner and her three fur babies.  She is happiest when she is outdoors or spending time with her adult human babies, usually in a pub or restaurant setting.  She really enjoys cooking, especially the annual Christmas dinner, and is more than happy to pass on some Yorkie Pud tips to Angie Jones.  Ironing is her therapy.