About Peter Gibson

Peter Gibson was Director of the Scottish Consumer Council (SCC) from 1977-90, when he played a vital role in building the SCC’s foundations and reputation. His leadership secured significant achievements for Scottish consumers, around such issues as money advice, small claims against faulty goods, freedom of information, access to services in rural areas, competition in domestic air travel, tenant participation, and choice in schooling.

Once encountered, never forgotten. Towering at least a head above everyone else at gatherings, Peter Gibson was a magnet for all comers because of his inexhaustible enthusiasm for every subject under the sun, his rich fund of anecdotes, wicked sense of humour, his infectious charm and his fascinated interest in everyone he met. The PGMF was set up in his memory by a small group close colleagues and friends, who as trustees wished to carry forward his ideas and interests.

Brought up in the Ayrshire village of Dunlop, Peter was educated at Glasgow Academy, St Andrews University and the University of California. In 1971 he worked as a regional organizer with Shelter, becoming director of Shelter Scotland in 1974. At the age of 29, he went on to direct the Scottish Consumer Council from 1977 to 1990, when he left to build his own successful consultancy business with his wife Amanda Britain. He died, aged 58, of cancer in December 2005.

Peter was an iconoclast, a radical and a rationalist. His iconoclasm saw him challenging in the 1970s the dominance of Scottish council housing and providing the impetus for the growth of the housing association movement. As chair of the Scottish Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux he also saw through radical reforms to bring about higher quality standards of advice for citizens. His rationalism underpinned the work of the Scottish Consumer Council, whose commitment to evidence-based policy making gave the SCC a powerful punch in Scottish public policy. His legacy is the formation in 2008 of Consumer Focus Scotland, the new consumer champion for Scotland, yet built on the rock solid foundations Peter had laid down.