Steven T. Jackson OBE

Steven T. Jackson has spent his whole working life in British industry. It began in his father’s scrap yard in Preston in 1979, aged 13, and he has kept a connection to the metals industry ever since. In 1989 he started trading personalised registrations as a sole trader from home in Preston, first as NU REG, renaming the business New Reg in 1991, which set him on what is now 37 years in the motor business.

He tends to move early. He has worked in the internet industry since 1995, and in 1996 he incorporated New Reg Limited and put the business online. Registrations.co.uk, newreg.co.uk and newreg.com ran in parallel rather than one after another, and the company still sits at the heart of the group today.

The New Reg website was featured on BBC Top Gear in the mid 1990s, when Quentin Willson told viewers “You can even buy them on the internet” and visited the Preston offices, the first television reference to private plates being sold online. When Auto Trader first went online, New Reg was the only registration dealer selling there, an arrangement that ran for about three years, and it advised Auto Trader on its internet strategy for private plates.

Away from motoring he founded Recycling Lives in 2006 and exited the business fully in 2020. He had built it as a social business: a commercial operation with social impact at its core, working alongside an independent charity and funding its work directly. It grew into a large national operation and earned four Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. In 2026, at the board’s request, he led the charity’s rebrand, and it continues its work today as Onward Lives.

He has also seen life inside a public-facing organisation, serving as a director and then chief executive of Preston North End Football Club between 2002 and 2006.

His work has been widely recognised. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to employment and the community in Lancashire, and he is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Central Lancashire. He was the overall United Kingdom winner of EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019 and winner of its Societal Impact category, and represented the United Kingdom at the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year awards in 2020. In 2025 Car.co.uk, part of the group, was ranked 74th in the Sunday Times 100, and in 2026 it received a King’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.

These days he builds. He has been resident in Monaco since 2017 and works from there, hands on across the group’s websites, and he has led the development of Garage.co.uk since 2025. The standards behind fuel.co.uk come from that same approach: fast, accurate and free of clutter.