Chris Bolt has spent much of his career keeping a watchful eye on the people entrusted to bring private sector know-how and backing to those industries once firmly within the Government’s grasp.

He joined the civil service in 1975 from Cambridge University, where he read economics. He trained as an economist and worked his way around various departments including HM Treasury and the Home Office.

It was as a civil servant in the late 1980s that he gained his first exposure to the privatised industries, acting as part of the Department of the Environment team, which took charge of privatising the water industry.

As part of that process he helped develop the regulatory regime which formed the basis of Ofwat, the water regulator.

It was under that body’s rules and controls that the UK’s large water and wastewater companies, and the scattering of smaller water-only companies, have been run.

In 1989 he joined Ofwat as head of economic regulation, a position he held until 1994.

It was at that point that he opted to use the regulatory experience he had garnered in the water industry on the country’s railtracks, stations and trains.

From Ofwat he moved to the Office of the Rail Regulator, also as head of economic regulation. In 1998 he was promoted to Rail Regulator, a position he would hold for less than a year.

In July 1999 he left to join Transco, which at that time owned most of the UK’s gas transportation network, as regulation and corporate affairs director.

Transco went on to become Lattice. He left the group in October 2002 on the completion of its merger with National Grid.

As PPP Arbiter on the London Underground PPP scheme, a post he signed up to in 2002, he will oversee Metronet’s claim that London Underground should meet some of the cost of work done on one of its PPP contracts which was above and beyond what the contract called for.

He was appointed chairman of the Office of Rail Regulation in July 2004 and will remain as PPP Arbiter until 2010.

Times Recommends

• Minister in talks with Saudis to protect creditors
• Premier Inn hits back in £29-a-room row
• Bankers hit back at 'populist' bonus supertax