Meet the team

The Bureau Local team – listed alphabetically below – combine years of experience in local, national and international reporting with data journalism and community engagement backgrounds.

Gareth Davies

Based in Lancashire, England

Gareth is an award-winning Reporter, who specialises in public interest and investigative journalism. As the chief reporter of the Croydon Advertiser, a weekly newspaper in London, he won 10 awards in five years, including Weekly Reporter of the Year at the Regional Press Awards a record four times.

Since joining the Bureau in 2017, Gareth has focused on the local government funding crisis and its impact on communities. This includes a data-led investigation revealing which local authorities were heading for financial collapse, the public spaces such as libraries and communities centres being sold off and the increasingly risky methods councils have turned to in order to generate extra revenue, including billion pound investments in property.

Gareth grew up reading the Southampton Advertiser the Southern Daily Echo. Having moved to Lancashire, he reads the Blackpool Gazette and Lancashire Post (formerly the Evening Post).

Hannah Summers

Based in London

Hannah Summers reports on the family courts for Bureau Local under the Family Court Files project. She has a background in covering social affairs, women’s rights and the law. As a freelance journalist her stories have been published in newspapers including the Observer, the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Mail on Sunday and the Independent. Prior to that she was a staff reporter for the Sunday Times.

She won the news and investigations category in the Freelance Writing Awards 2021 for her coverage of violence against women and girls, and was shortlisted for freelance journalist of the year in the 2022 Media Freedom Awards for coverage including the treatment of pregnant women in prison and the NHS charging migrant women for maternity care.

In 2023 she was named best specialist journalist in the Freelance Journalism Awards for her reporting on the family courts and was shortlisted for the Paul Foot Award for her investigation into mothers having their children removed following the evidence of unregulated experts appointed in child custody cases.

Emiliano Mellino

Based in Portsmouth, England

Emiliano is an award-winning journalist and organiser, specialising in large-scale collaborative investigations. His experience spans everything from union organising to financial journalism, and he has reported from London, Paris, Guatemala … and Portsmouth. Emiliano enjoys reading his local paper, the News, and is a fan of cooperative media startups, including the Bristol Cable, the Ferret and the Manchester Meteor.