Co-founder
Co-founder, Insightful AI. North West England.
Ben Sefton is a co-founder of Insightful AI, a North West England consultancy that helps SMEs, charities, and public sector organisations adopt AI safely and in line with UK data protection law. He spent 18 years as a Senior Forensic Investigator with Greater Manchester Police and leads the company's strategy, governance, and advisory work.
Ben has 28 years of leadership experience in environments where every decision had to survive scrutiny. Eighteen of those years were spent as a Senior Forensic Investigator with Greater Manchester Police, working major criminal investigations. Evidence and data were handled to a legal standard. A record that could not be accounted for was a record that could not be used.
That work taught him to let the evidence settle the argument. He advises the same way now. Before recommending anything, he asks what the data actually shows. When AI is the wrong tool for the problem in front of an organisation, he says so plainly. Buyers rarely hear that from a supplier.
Ben works with SMEs, charities, and public sector teams across the United Kingdom, from a base in North West England.
Ben leads strategy, governance, and the relationship with every organisation we work for. He sets the direction of an engagement at the start and stays the point of contact until it finishes.
His co-founder Kane Lukassen leads technical delivery. Strategy and build sit inside one team rather than across two suppliers, so the people who set the direction stay accountable for what gets built. Ben and Kane lead a team of specialists across governance, data, and implementation.
Ben spent 18 years in a job where a single gap in how data was recorded, stored, or reasoned about could collapse a prosecution. Chain of custody was not paperwork. Defensible decisions and clear records were the work itself.
UK GDPR (the United Kingdom's data protection law) and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO, the UK's data protection regulator) ask much the same of any organisation using AI. Show what data you hold. Show how a decision was reached. Show that you can still account for it a year later.
Three habits carry across into his AI ethics and governance work. He treats data handling as a question of accountability rather than convenience. He documents the reasoning behind a decision so it holds up when someone challenges it months afterwards. And he understands how criminals take up new technology, which shapes how we assess AI risk for the organisations we advise.
Ben is the fractional Chief AI Officer at Cheshire Community Foundation, a pro bono role, and fractional Head of Digital and Innovation at the National Emergencies Trust. He also provides occasional consultancy and advice to the North West Cyber Resilience Centre.
Ben speaks on AI-enabled crime, deepfakes, and responsible AI adoption, to audiences in policing, business, and the charity sector.
Ben was interviewed by LBC News about the NFER study on automation and employment. The study found that between one and three million UK jobs could disappear by 2035 as automation and AI reduce administrative, secretarial, customer service, and machine-operation roles. It warns that the decline is arriving faster than earlier forecasts suggested. It calls for lifelong learning in six employment skills: communication, collaboration, problem-solving, planning, creative thinking, and information literacy.
Ben's profile is on LinkedIn. If you want to talk through what AI adoption would mean for your organisation, our team is happy to help.
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