Board Members
Portia Ragnauth - Chief Crown Prosecutor - Chair
Portia Ragnauth joined the CPS in the 1980`s having completed her pupillage at the Bar where she worked at a variety of Inner London Branches including Camberwell, Bow Street and Horseferry Road. At Camberwell Green she was in charge of cases from the Brixton Area.
Portia then moved to Croydon CPS where she became involved in the setting up of specialist domestic violence courts for the area.
On promotion to Chief Crown Prosecutor, Portia then moved to Durham and worked there for three and a half years.
At Durham and with the backing of the Local Criminal Justice Board, the Area set up the first “Hate Crimes Court” in the country. This was established in January 2005.
Her present position is that of Chief Crown Prosecutor for Surrey.
Toby Wells, Head of Youth Justice
Toby Wells is Head of Youth Justice for Surrey with responsibility for management of young offenders following sentence. Qualifying as a teacher in the early 80’s, Toby has worked in the field of community safety and youth justice for 20 years.
Colin McConnell, South Central Area Manager HM Prisons
Colin joined HMPS in 1992 from the Scottish Prison Service. Colin has a wide range of experience gained in a number of posts in both the operational and HQ environments, both north and south of the border. He was appointed to manage the Surrey & Sussex Area of the Prison Service in November 2004.
Julia Eeles - HMCS Area Director for Surrey & Sussex
Julia Eeles is a solicitor by profession, having qualified in private practice in Birkenhead in 1982. She joined the Magistrates’ Courts Service as a legal advisor in Ipswich and in due course moved on to Nottingham, Southend-on-Sea and finally to Cheltenham. In 1993 Julia joined HM Magistrates’ Courts Service Inspectorate as a Senior Inspector. In 1998 she was appointed as Justices’ Chief Executive for Cleveland and in 2001 took up the same post in Cheshire. Julia was appointed as Area Director for Cheshire in 2005 and was recently appointed as Area Director for Surrey and Sussex in November 2006.
Mark Rowley - Chief Constable
Mark Rowley began his policing career in West Midlands, having graduated from St. Catharines College, Cambridge. After a broad uniformed and detective career in Birmingham, he moved to the National Criminal Investigation Service. Here, as Detective Superintendent, he led on the national deployment of covert techniques to combat organised crime such as telephone interception and tasking of the intelligence agencies. He was a key member of the team that compiled the ‘National Intelligence Model’ that has since been implemented across the country.
On transferring to Surrey as Chief Superintendent in West Surrey, he oversaw major crime reductions and led several countywide initiatives, including Surrey's nationally acclaimed 'yellow card' Surrey Street Standards anti-robbery campaign and the reduction of drugs deaths in the area.
Mark was appointed Assistant Chief Constable from November 2003. He helped generate the ‘National Reassurance Policing Project’. This work included the establishment of "neighbourhood panels" where local people vote on what they want local officers and themselves to tackle in the subsequent month. Mark then took responsibility for ‘Specialist Operations’ in the county. He has led several nationally high profile critical incidents such as the attempt murder of Abigail Witchalls and is leading the South-East Regional Collaboration work on Protective Services. He supported the ACPO development work on ‘Workforce Modernisation’ in this role and continues to do so since taking responsibilities as Deputy Chief Constable in December 2007. In March 2008 Mark was appointed as Temporary Chief Constable. In March 2009, Mark was appointed as Chief Constable.
Yvette Ball - Chief Probation Officer
Yvette joined the Surrey Probation Area (SPA) in December 2008 on secondment from Gloucestershire Probation Area where she was Chief Officer from 2004-2008. Her achievements in Gloucestershire included performance improvement to green star status, changing the Ryecroft Approved Premises to supervise serious offenders and maintaining public protection through the major Gloucestershire floods in 2007 when the county was without running water for 10 days.
She previously worked in SPA in a range of roles including Court Welfare Officer, Probation Officer, Court and Supervision Manager and Assistant Chief Officer and completed a Home Office sponsored MBA at Reading University.
She is looking forward to working with the Board and staff to further develop as we move into the new world of Trusts. She aims to build on our good relationships with partners, promote SPA and engage positively with the community to continuously improve our ability to reduce re-offending
Robert McCauley, Criminal Defence Manager
Criminal Defence Service
After graduating from St Catharine's College, Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Rob worked in accountancy before joining the Inland Revenue.
He joined what was then the Legal Aid Board, the forerunner of the Legal Services Commission, in 1993. He worked on the development of quality assurance for Legal Aid suppliers. From 2000 he managed
contracts in Kent and Sussex.
Rob was appointed to the role of Criminal Defence Service Manager in 2005 and joined the Surrey Criminal Justice Board in January 2008.
In addition to his role in Surrey, Rob is also responsible for Criminal Defence services in Sussex and Kent where he also sits on the Criminal Justice boards.