Chris Hughes

Chris joined the Internet Watch Foundation in February 2012. He is responsible for the smooth and conscientious running of the hotline, which receives inbound reports from all over the world and proactively searches for child sexual abuse material.

Chris is responsible for allocating resources to meet operational demands, and he matches individual assignments and projects to analysts, creating and growing their areas of specialism and expertise. He also ensures that the welfare needs of his team are met.

Chris is heavily involved in the recruitment and on-boarding of new analysts, and he leads their training and development which includes refining their skills to be able to find and assess content, and in understanding the legal frameworks under which we operate.

Chris liaises with our membership development team, and our Members directly, to ensure that the services and datasets that we provide are helping to support and enhance companies’ services and platforms, creating a safer internet.

Chris is responsible for the quality of the hotline’s work; he ensures that the team is appropriately equipped to meet the challenges, and that the standard of the data produced and the skills of our analysts remain world-leading and globally trusted. He also shares responsibility to maintain the highest levels of security of our data and our staff.

Chris is the IWF’s key contact with Law Enforcement bodies in the UK and around the world including Interpol. He leads on IWF’s victim identification referrals to law enforcement, ensuring that incidents are escalated to the National Crime Agency appropriately.

He sits on several advisory groups which include:

• Multi-agency preventing online child sexual abuse and exploitation group with Police Scotland;
• The National Crime Agency CSA Prevent Group;
• INHOPE working groups.

Chris’ expertise as Hotline Director is also utilised across numerous technical and policy projects and issues.

Chris started his career in hospitality and catering before moving into the IT training sector.

He has previously had roles as a Training Director and Business Manager overseeing the delivery of the DWP Work Programme, across three sites in the East of England.