Alan Jones MCIPR

Leading all political and stakeholder engagement across local and regional government as well as working with the wider team on engaging with Members of Parliament in Westminster and the devolved governments, my role allows me to take a more proactive approach to stakeholder engagement as well as working more closely with corporate media and community colleagues to further enhance Asda’s reputation. I regularly attend and speak at public meetings and in many cases am the ‘public face’ of the business. I have helped:

• Build Asda’s political reputation across all levels of government;
• Create effective communication strategies for a range of audiences both internally and externally;
• Deliver multi-million-pound development projects, generating significant returns for the business;
• Secure permission for a vast number of new stores as well as enhancing and protecting the existing estate, leading to hundreds of millions of pounds in new and protected sales;
• Input on a range of government policy areas;
• Engage with local, regional and national stakeholders on various issues; and
• Raise the profile of the business with external stakeholders by attending and exhibiting at conferences.

More recently, due to a team restructure, my role was changed to ‘Political Manager’ to reflect the broader audience I engaged with.

• Part of the wider Corporate Affairs Team, I managed Asda’s local government and stakeholder engagement throughout the UK
• I focused on maintaining and enhancing corporate reputation with local government, defending against competitor proposals and promoting new space and estate optimisation programmes, helping to generate millions of pounds in extra sales
• I helped facilitate Asda’s entry into new markets by creating a positive political and stakeholder environment to support investment plans right across the UK

• Part of the Town Planning Team with management of all town planning matters across the UK and Northern Ireland estate, petrol and roll-out programmes including vast public relations management
• Extensive project management skills utilised
• Advising internally and managing consultant framework (circa 50) to deliver programmes
• Regular councillor negotiations, resident meetings, public exhibitions and (addressing) planning committees

• Preparation, submission and negotiation of planning applications/appeals (and some retail focused Inquiry documents), writing Retail Impact Assessments, preparing statistical tables, co-coordinating sub-consultants, and attending public exhibitions, resident meetings and council(lor) meetings