Rod and his wife Sue moved to Breedon in 1989 eighteen months before the A42 bypass was opened. Both his children, Anna & Harry attended to local school followed by Ashby Grammar.

Brought up in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, he completed a five year apprenticeship in plumbing and heating before attending Nottingham Trent University to study Quantity Surveying.

Rod worked as plumbing and heating engineer for six years before working as QS for fifteen years, after which he went back to his first love of plumbing and heating. He has worked on projects as diverse as the rebuilding of Oakthorpe School kitchen, Toyota factory power plant, Highcross shopping centre, Clive Sinclair's calculator factory and the re-roofing of houses on The Crescent, Breedon.

Rod takes a keen interest in all sports particularly dinghy sailing which he took up at the age of eight.