Founder of MonacoViews. Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 2013 New Year Honours, for services to employment and the community in Lancashire. Overall United Kingdom winner of EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2019, and winner of its Societal Impact category. Founder of NEW REG Limited (Car.co.uk), which he began as a sole trader in 1989. He founded the social enterprise Recycling Lives, which he exited in 2020.
Royal honour
OBE, 2013 New Year Honours
Announced 29 December 2012, for services to employment and the community in Lancashire
Entrepreneur of the Year
EY overall United Kingdom winner and Societal Impact category winner, 2019
World final, 2020 (scheduled Monaco, held online)
Steven was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to employment and the community in Lancashire. Letters Patent were issued at the Court of Saint James's on 29 December 2012 and signed by Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with the Order's Seal countersigned by His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as Grand Master. The citation is recorded in the 2013 New Year Honours list .
Steven was commissioned as a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Lancashire on 4 November 2016 by The Right Honourable The Lord Shuttleworth KG KCVO, then Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire, under section 2 of the Lieutenancies Act 1997. He served the County for nearly a decade, including eight years after his move to Monaco in 2017. In 2025 he concluded that he could no longer contribute fairly to a Lancashire lieutenancy from abroad and resigned the appointment.
The University of Central Lancashire, now the University of Lancashire, conferred upon Steven an Honorary Fellowship on 6 December 2011 in recognition of his outstanding achievements. It is an honorary distinction rather than an academic degree: he left Hutton Grammar School at 16 and went into business.
Steven founded MonacoViews to bring transparent, first-hand property intelligence to Monaco's residential market. He is the founder and Person of Significant Control of PICCUP LIMITED, the company that operates the platform. Every building profile on the site is grounded in photography Steven has personally taken on foot in the Principality, and every editorial standard on the site is one he has set.
Steven is the founder and Person of Significant Control of NEW REG Limited , which he started as a sole trader from his home in Preston, Lancashire, in 1989 under the name NU REG, renaming the business New Reg in 1991, and incorporated on 5 January 1996. The group's consumer brands are NewReg.co.uk, Car.co.uk, Trader.co.uk, Garage.co.uk, PrivatePlates.co.uk and Domains.co.uk, with Trader.co.uk operated by Trader Operations Limited and Garage.co.uk by Car Operations Limited. Steven has been the lead developer of Garage.co.uk since 2025.
The first New Reg website went live in 1996, with Registrations.co.uk, NewReg.co.uk and newreg.com running in parallel. The site was featured on BBC Top Gear in the mid 1990s, where Quentin Willson told viewers “You can even buy them on the internet”, the first television reference to private registrations being sold online, and he visited the Preston offices. When Auto Trader first went online, New Reg was the only registration dealer selling on the internet, and the two struck a commercial deal that made New Reg the only registration number dealer on Auto Trader for about three years, with New Reg advising Auto Trader on its internet strategy for private plates. That predates the DVLA selling online and predates the next competitor by many months. Steven has worked in the automotive industry for 37 years, since 1989, and in the internet industry for 31 years, since 1995. He is a member of the Cherished Numbers Dealers Association and of MIRAD.
Car.co.uk received the 2026 King's Award for Enterprise for Innovation , the highest official business honour in the United Kingdom, personally approved by His Majesty The King, and was ranked 74 in the Sunday Times 100 in 2025. The award was delivered alongside CEO William T Fletcher MBE and COO Anthony Sharkey, who have worked with Steven for more than a decade.
Steven founded Recycling Lives in 2006, in a reverse takeover and rebrand of Preston Recycling Ltd, in which he held a 50 per cent shareholding. The associated charity entity, Recycling Lives Charity, was incorporated on 13 April 2006. The integrated social-enterprise model, in which the commercial recycling business funds rehabilitation and employment programmes for ex-offenders and people experiencing homelessness, was actively launched in 2008 and grew out of personal experience and the conviction that business can be a force for good.
Under his chairmanship the group became the United Kingdom's most decorated social enterprise, winning four Queen's Awards for Enterprise. By 2018 it employed approximately 400 staff across 19 sites, of whom around 40 per cent were ex-offenders. The reoffending rate among Recycling Lives participants was 4 per cent, against a national average of 37 per cent.
Three Hills Capital Partners invested in the group in late 2018. In October 2020 Steven stepped down as Chairman and exited the group fully, selling all of his shares in the commercial entities and resigning as trustee and member of the charity. The group entered administration in 2024, under the management appointed after he left, and the metals business was sold to Global Ardour Recycling Limited. At the board's request he later led the rebrand of the charity, which became Onward Lives on 5 June 2026.
Steven was appointed a director of Preston North End plc on 22 August 2002 and served on the board until 18 August 2006. He held a major shareholding throughout that period, and served as Chief Executive Officer from 2004 to 2006. NewReg was the club's official shirt sponsor for the duration of his time on the board.
Steven joined the board five months after the collapse of ITV Digital, an event that wiped out the broadcasting income on which most Football League clubs had become dependent and pushed several Championship sides close to administration. The restructuring required to keep Preston solvent and competitive in that environment was substantial, and it is the period of Steven's career he is most often asked about and least often credited for.
As CEO from 2004 alongside the appointment of manager Billy Davies, Steven set a deliberate “all for one and one for all” leadership culture in which the manager, the board and the playing squad were aligned to a single objective. The 2004 to 2006 PNE side, built around David Nugent, Richard Cresswell and Sean Gregan, is still viewed by many Preston supporters as the strongest modern incarnation of the club. Deepdale was regularly full. Preston finished third in the Championship in 2004-05 and reached the play-off final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, losing 1-0 to West Ham United, and finished fourth the following season, going out at the play-off semi-final stage to Leeds.
Steven resigned from the board in August 2006, shortly after Billy Davies' departure to Derby County . Preston's league record since has not bettered the league position or play-off progress achieved in those two seasons, and the 2004 to 2006 run remains the closest the club has come to a return to the top flight in modern times.
Steven's connection with the Principality predates MonacoViews. He became a Monaco resident in 2017 and has lived in the Principality for nearly a decade. As the EY UK overall winner of Entrepreneur of the Year for 2019, and winner of its Societal Impact category, he went on to represent the United Kingdom at the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year final for 2020, which had been scheduled for Monaco and was ultimately held online following the COVID-19 disruption. He has been a member of the Yacht Club de Monaco since 15 November 2022 and is a member of the Automobile Club de Monaco. All of his business is conducted from Monaco.
MonacoViews is the product of that long residency: a property platform built by someone for whom Monaco is genuinely home, with first-hand photography of every building and a refusal to publish anything that the founder has not personally verified on foot. The paramount display gate on the platform is not a marketing claim. It is a working editorial rule that the founder enforces personally because he walks these streets every week.
Photography by MonacoViews. Every building on the site is photographed by Steven personally.
Every honour and ventures claim on this page is supported by independent or sovereign-source records. The links below are the primary references.