Tim was a grass roots trade union campaigner in the construction industry in the late 70s and 80s, fighting against the privatisation of directly-employed labour in local authorities and the use of 'labour only subcontracting', which led to poor health and safety conditions and lower wages. In the early 1990s he worked at the Refugee Legal Centre - a free representation unit for asylum seekers appealling against the refusal of asylum by the Home office - successfully representing many asylum seekers before the UK Immigration Courts. In the late 90s as the level of detention rose dramatically, he set up an award-winning Human Rights organisation, Bail for Immigration Detainees, which sought to ensure that detained asylum seekers in the UK had access to judicial oversight of their detention consistent with the Human Rights Act. This work included an innovative litigant-in-person project for detainees who lacked access to legal representation due to cuts in the legal aid budget. In 2006 he started working with the Campaign against Climate Change. He joined COIN in February 2007.