Shruti Bhargava
Chair, Unity Homes & Enterprise

Shruti Bhargava is Chair of Leeds based BME housing association Unity Homes and Enterprise. Professionally, she is an independent consultant with interests in strategy, leadership, organisational development, systems and working with others to tackle ‘impossible’ challenges.

She started her career 30 years ago as a business modeller in the steel industry. Since then, she has had a multi-dimensional career across sectors and roles from working with community groups to global consultancy programmes. This has included tenant led and participation projects, being a management consultant on strategy and risk projects in multi-nationals, and working for the Audit Commission as a local government VFM specialist. She led organisation wide transformational ‘Best Value’ reviews at Sheffield City Council, before joining Sheffield Homes as a manager where she led on two successful ALMO inspections, and later became part of its Board.

She is a champion of diversity, and known for speaking out against structural racism, including at the recent Northern Powerhouse conference, on economic inequalities. She is a former trustee of a BME domestic abuse charity and is currently a commissioner on the Sheffield Race Equality Commission.

Shruti describes herself as ‘diversity personified’ – personally, professionally, and in terms of lived experience. She has two mottoes: ‘Don’t even try and put me in a box,’ and ‘Do the right thing.’

She has a degree in Mathematics from Manchester University, a Masters degree in Operational Research from Birmingham University, and an MBA from Ashridge Business School.

David Armstrong
Chief Financial Officer, Flagship Group

David Armstrong is Chief Financial Officer at Flagship Group, with responsibility for areas including Finance, IT and Business Planning.

David is proud to champion Flagship’s ethos of continuous improvement. He has a particular interest in how innovation and technology can improve services and deliver benefits for both customers and staff.

Prior to his time at Flagship, David spent almost 20 years working in a variety of Finance, IT and Change roles, mainly within the financial services sector.

Nick Atkin
Chief Executive, Yorkshire Housing

Nick has a track record of leading organisations through transformational change, driving performance improvement, with a focus on maximising the untapped potential from businesses and people.

Born and brought up in Doncaster he joined Yorkshire Housing in 2019. Since this time, he’s delivered transformational change throughout the business to meet the future opportunities and challenges.

Nick has previously introduced a fully flexible/ remote working approach. He also led the move to 90% of customer led transactions to be delivered through online self-service channels. He is a keen advocate of innovation and uses digital as an enabler to drive fundamental change in how businesses operate. He is also a disruptor in the ‘future of work’ debate and has been paperless for 19 years.

He writes regularly for Inside Housing as one of their columnists.

Paul Bayly
Head of Governance and Compliance, National Housing Federation

Paul is the Governance and Compliance Manager for the Federation. He looks after the Federation’s internal risk and assurance processes and is responsible for advising members on governance matters. Paul also assists organisations looking to adopt the Federation’s Model Rules for Registered Societies.

Alix Bedford
Risk Proposition Manager, Zurich Municipal

Alix is a strategic risk professional with over 18 years’ experience working both with and within the public sector, Alix’s current role involves looking at the key emerging and evolving areas of risk impacting the public sector now and in the future. Alix is leading on Sustainability risk within Zurich Municipal, looking at Climate, Workforce and Data risk areas particularly. Alix started her career as a Strategic Risk Consultant before spending 7 years as the lead officer for risk and performance management at a Unitary Local Authority. Alix has experience in a variety of fields including strategy and policy development, corporate planning, performance management, programme and project management and business resilience.”

Richard Blakeway
Housing Ombudsman

Richard was appointed as Housing Ombudsman from 1 September 2019. He has extensive experience in the housing sector, with previous roles including Deputy Mayor of London for Housing, chair of the Homes for London board and non-executive director of Homes England. During his eight years at the Greater London Authority, Richard was responsible for a major investment programme, overseeing the delivery of 100,000 affordable homes and regeneration plans for 670 hectares of land owned by the authority. Richard led the creation of the first team at City Hall to address rough sleeping, commissioning around £10 million of services each year, as well as the first Social Impact Bond on homelessness.

Yinka Bolajie
Executive Director – Property & Development, Wandle

Yinka is the Executive Director for Property and Development at Wandle HA, a housing association with 7000 properties in South London. He leads teams that create and develop new homes and maintains or improves existing homes to required standard and optimises value of £3 billion property portfolio.

Yinka was previously Portfolio Management Director at Genesis Housing Association and Head of Portfolio and Business Planning at Anchor Trust. He also worked on various development roles at Anchor Trust.

Yinka has a degree in Quantity Surveying and a MBA and is a Leadership 2025 alumni and Non-Executive Director at First Gardens Cities Homes, a registered provider with 2000 homes in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

David Braziel
Technical Director, Decision Time

As Technical Director, David’s passion for the arts and technology makes him a champion of creative problem solving. Responsible for innovation and product development, his clear vision of how Decision Time can help leaders run increasingly complex organisations makes him a brilliant joiner of dots.

Matt Brazier
Director IT, Flagship Group

Jenny Brown
Chair of Audit and Risk Committee, Longhurst

Jenny is a governance and EDI specialist working both as a governance consultant and as a learning and development facilitator focussing on EDI and behaviours. She is passionate about bringing these two worlds together to create better organisations who can have a greater impact on more people. Jenny has worked on and with boards for many years and is currently Audit and Risk Committee Chair and Chair elect at Longhurst Group.

Laurie Brown
Director – Information Security, Flagship Group

John Butler
Policy Leader, National Housing Federation

John Butler is the Finance Policy Leader at the National Housing Federation. Having preciously spent three and a half years at PriceWaterhouse Coopers John worked for a marketing company for a year before joining the Federation

Joseph Carr
Board Member, Longhurst Group

Joseph is a qualified accountant of more than 25 years - he has worked in the housing association sector for more than 20 years, this included a recent 8.5-year stint as Finance Policy Leader at the National Housing Federation. He has worked as a tax consultant at Deloitte, PwC and in his own consultancy practice. As Director of jc&a consultancy, he continues to provide support to housing associations on a range of issues, including: accounting, treasury, pensions, risk management, compliance, regulation and governance.

Ian Clark
Executive Director of Business Improvement, Together Housing

Ian has worked in the social housing sector for 30 years, and is currently Executive Director of Business Improvement at the Together Housing Group. He is responsible for HR and culture, Data, IT, Governance, Risk and Innovation. Ian has done most things in the social housing sector, including working through three HA mergers. He is passionate about data driven cultural and service change, while ensuring no one is left behind. Over his adult life has been a social housing tenant, private tenant, and home owner, so he knows what good and bad landlords look like.

David Cleary
Managing Director & Head of Housing, Lloyds Banking Group

David leads Lloyds Bank’s national housing business with responsibility for the social housing, housebuilding and offsite manufacturing sectors. Formed in 2018, the Housing team won Residential Financier of the Year in 2019 & 2020. David is ACIB qualified and has a first class honours degree in Financial Services.

David joined Lloyds Bank in 1989, undertaking numerous roles across Retail and Commercial banking before joining the Capital Markets division in 2000. Initial roles included the debt financing and associated risk management of both corporate and sponsor backed M&A. Subsequently, David was instrumental in the development of Lloyds Bank’s Capital Markets business in both the public and private debt markets where he gained a deep understanding of working with US, UK and European investors. In January 2017, David returned to relationship banking and in July 2018 was appointed as Managing Director & Head of Housing for the Commercial Banking Division.

In March 2021, David was appointed Executive Committee member of NextGeneration to support transparency and improve sustainability in new build housing. David is also a Board Director of Sustainability for Housing Limited, focusing on all aspects of sustainability in Social Housing.

Kerry Cole
Head of Business Development, National Housing Federation

Kerry is the interim Head of Business Development at the National Housing Federation and is responsible for securing partnerships that demonstrate real value to NHF members.

She held strategic marketing and sales roles within the membership and charity sectors before joining the NHF in April 2019 as Marketing Manager. Putting member and client needs at the heart of her work, she enables both the organisations and people that she works with to succeed.

Outside of work, Kerry is an active volunteer and can usually be found at the allotment she began nurturing in early 2021.

Kate Dodsworth
Director of Consumer Regulation, Regulator of Social Housing

Kate started her housing career in homelessness before moving to the National Housing Federation where she was Assistant Director covering London the South East and East of England. She moved to Amicus Horizon in 2013, sitting on the Executive team for five years during which it became Optivo. Kate took on the role of Chief Executive at Gateway Housing Association in 2018.

She is also one of the founding members of Leadership 2025, which was set up to address diversity gaps in housing leadership, and is a trustee of the charity that is taking this work forward.

Paul Dowell
Consulting Director, RSM

Paul has over 20 years’ experience of senior leadership in general management, program and project management, business analysis, operational/strategic management, and business transformation. He has led several multi-million pound programs, including the £1.2 billion Gas Distribution Strategic Partnership for National Grid, as well as supporting the London Underground/Thales GTS 4Lines Signalling upgrade; Paul is experienced in Root Cause Analysis of program, operational and general business problems and implementation of practical solutions for clients; leadership coaching/training in Lean and Lean Leadership. Paul supports organisations by developing strategies and action plans that translate strategic aspirations into delivered outcomes.

Paul has a wealth of leadership experience in high integrity, regulated and customer sensitive sectors. He has lead both from the business side with P&L responsibility and business development accountability, and from the fulfilment or support service side, in operational roles or functional directorates.

Rose Grayston
Senior Programme Manager - Housing, New Economics Foundation

Rose has 10 years of experience in providing research, policy and communications services to progressive campaigns and their leaders. Rose has managed and led successful campaigns to reduce borrowing rates for local authority house-building, reform English planning rules to incentivise the delivery of affordable homes, and to build political and public support for reform of England’s broken land and house-building systems.

Previously Policy Manager at Shelter, Rose is currently Senior Programme Manager for Housing at the New Economics Foundation. She also co-authored the recent report of the Create Streets Foundation’s No Place Left Behind Commission with Toby Lloyd.

Sue Harvey
Partner, Campbell Tickell

Sue is a Partner at Campbell Tickell where she leads for the practice on risk, assurance and regulation. She is the Chair of the Housing Ombudsman’s Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and a member of the MHCLG Audit Chairs’ Forum.

Kate Henderson
Chief Executive, National Housing Federation

Kate Henderson is Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, the voice of housing associations in England. Our members provide 2.7 million homes for nearly six million people and each year they invest in a diverse range of neighbourhood projects that help create strong, vibrant communities.

Prior to joining the Federation in October 2018 Kate was Chief Executive of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA). During her decade at the TCPA Kate raised the Association’s profile through a range of campaigns and policy initiatives, most notably around Garden Cities, local authority innovation, affordable housing, health, poverty and climate change.

Kate has been involved in a number of government panels and independent commissions including the Lyons Housing Review. She is a visiting professor at the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London, a Board member of the International Federation of Housing & Planning, and has co-authored various books including ‘The Art of Building a Garden City’ published by RIBA Publishing and winner of the National Urban Design Book Award 2018.

Alison Inman
Board Member, Balkerne Gardens Trust and Saffron Housing Trust

Alison Inman is a board member at Balkerne Gardens Trust , Saffron Housing Trust and Tpas. She was CIH President 2017/18 and is a former chair of Colchester Borough Homes, the National Federation of ALMOs and Broadland Housing Association.

Andrew Lancaster
Partner, Anthony Collins Solicitors

Andrew is a partner in Anthony Collins construction and public procurement team operating within the local government, care and social housing sectors. He leads a team of lawyers working with clients within specialist sectors to resolve difficulties arising from construction and maintenance issues and public procurement processes. Andrew is also a compliance officer for legal practice for Anthony Collins and he is also an experienced commercial mediator.

Andrew has over 30 years experience in helping clients to manage legal disputes within specialist sectors. He has a national reputation for resolving public procurement disputes and his team has been involved in some of the leading cases in this area. He has spoken at high profile conferences and written articles and thought pieces to assist clients in managing and avoiding construction and public procurement disputes. Andrew is ranked as a “notable practitioner” by Chambers 2015 for construction.

Fiona MacGregor
Chief Executive, Regulator of Social Housing

Fiona became Chief Executive of the standalone Regulator of Social Housing in October 2018 having been Director of Regulation at the Homes and Communities Agency from November 2015. The Regulator is responsible for the regulation of registered social housing providers. Previously, as Director of Programmes, she was responsible for HCA’s Affordable Housing and Help to Buy programmes. Fiona has over 25 years housing experience, covering development investment, programme delivery and policy development. She has worked at the HCA since it launched in 2008, before which she was Deputy Director of Investment at the Housing Corporation, and prior to that, Head of Development at London & Quadrant.

Archana Makol
Chair of A&R Committee, Accent

Archana is a lawyer and a Client Services Director at DWF , leading on transformational claims management services across a variety of risks. She was previously Chief Counsel at BT, advising on Health and Safety and related legal issues whilst leading a large team managing claims and litigation. Archana was also the managing director and compliance officer for BT Law Ltd and has been involved in a number of transformational and outsourcing projects.

Archana is driven and highly organised thriving on projects which bring a sense of achievement.

John Mansergh
Director of Business Assurance, South Lakes Housing

John is Director of Business Assurance and Company Secretary at South Lakes Housing. He is responsible for performance & risk management, health & safety, internal audit, communications and co-regulation. He provides executive support to the Audit & Risk Committee and Chairs the internal Health & Safety Committee.

John has over 15 years’ experience in managing performance and leading change projects both within housing organisations and the adult social care sector.

Gayle Monk
Senior Associate, Anthony Collins Solicitors

Gayle is a senior associate working with councils and the wider public, private and third-sector clients on their relationships, both contractual and corporate. She advises on public procurement and state aid, and the delivery of public services through contracts, joint ventures or other vehicles. Gayle focuses on achieving social value and community benefit through those public services

Gayle has advised councils and others in the public sector on their procurement processes and contracts, and alternative delivery models for public services including Teckal and trading companies and joint ventures. She has also advised third and private sector organisations on their relationships with the public sector, be it through Big Lottery or EU funding, or through public procurement processes.

Katie Moore
Interim Director of Assurance, Procurement & Transactions, Citizen

Katie has 12 years’ experience in social housing specialising in in corporate service operations with over 7 years leading the Performance and Business Intelligence functions, developing a culture of data driven decision making. More recently Katie has been leading the assurance services including Governance, Risk Management and Regulations across the Group. Katie is also Vice Chair of a housing charity in Birmingham.

Aileen Murphie
Honorary Professor, Durham University Business School

Aileen was Director of MHCLG & Local Government VFM at the NAO since 2013. In 2014, with the passing of the Local Audit and Accountability Act, she transitioned the Audit Commission’s remaining staff to the NAO and implemented the new powers given to the NAO with reference to the local government sector.

She has published a series of influential reports to Parliament on the financial sustainability of local authorities, with a ground-breaking report on Local authority commercial investments in 2020 and most recently publishing Local government finance in the pandemic. She has also reported regularly on major service areas of local government including adult social care, focusing on the halting progress on integrating health and social care, The interface between health and social care in 2019. The report highlighted that despite 20 years of trying, integration with all the waste of resources that implies is unresolved.

On housing, she has published Housing in England: an overview, Homelessness in England, Planning for New Homes and a progress review of the government’s biggest housing initiative Help to Buy. Most recently, she has published a factual report on Everyone In, the government’s initiative for housing rough sleeping during the first wave of the pandemic.

Aileen has published 90 major reports on public expenditure and supported over 70 Public Accounts Committee sessions. A regular commentator and speaker on live issues in the local government sector, she is also honorary professor at Durham University Business School and a fellow of the Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Since retiring from the NAO in March 2021, she has been appointed Specialist Advisor to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

Linda Nash
Chair, Live West

Linda was appointed to the board of Knightstone in 2014 and the board of LiveWest in 2018. Linda is a founding director of Nash Bevan Associates, a trustee on the board of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and chairman of North Somerset Community Partnership and Kings School’s Taunton. Linda has also been chairman of Somerset Partnership NHS Trust and on the Board of Musgrove Park Hospital.

Valerie Oldfield
Chair Together with Tenants resident advisory panel, Together With Tenants

Valerie Oldfield has been a social housing tenant for 33 years and an active tenant for 18 years. Valerie was voted in as a board member by residents for three consecutive terms, resulting in nine years on the board of her housing association. Four of those years were spent as vice-chair. As a board member, Valerie was part of the remuneration committee, was lead board member for resident involvement, as well as information technology, and was part of the merger working group.

Valerie has been active in many tenant involvement activities: a member of the performance review group, repairs group, scrutiny group, resident design group, readers’ panel, and a member and chair of the residents’ forum. Valerie also attends various residents’ focus groups.

Coming from a business, creative and community background, Valerie strongly believes in residents and their housing associations working together, and in the development of the relationship, understanding and services of social housing.

Rachael Orr
Director, PlaceShapers

Rachael is the Director of PlaceShapers, the network for more than 100 community-based social landlords. She leads the strategy and direction for the organisation, delivering member services, policy and campaigns with members.

Previously, Rachael was Head of Oxfam's UK programme, leading Oxfam's advocacy, campaigning and programme work on UK poverty. She led a team delivering programmes supporting women to move into work and challenging poverty and inequality.

Rachael joined Oxfam from Shelter, where she held various senior policy and campaigning roles. She ran regional and national campaigns on housing, welfare reform and wider UK poverty issues. Before Shelter, Rachael worked as a support worker and in hostels for homeless people.

Rachael served for seven years as chair of Angel Shed Theatre Company, an inclusive theatre charity in Islington. She is a trustee at the Refugee Council and Non-Executive Director at Suffolk Housing Society.

Jenny Osbourne
Chief Executive, TPAS

Jenny Osbourne is Chief Executive at Tpas – the tenant engagement experts and has been with Tpas since 2002. Her previous role was Head of Corporate Services with specific responsibility for membership and governance matters.

She is an English Graduate from Leeds University. Prior to working for Tpas Jenny worked for the Post Office on their management programme in the branch network. Previous to that role Jenny worked for Scottish and Newcastle in their Leeds office on data management.

Jenny is committed to the tenant empowerment agenda, and is a strong advocate for effective partnership working between tenants, providers, contractors and government.

Brendan Sarsfield
Chair, Sustainability for Housing

Brendan is the Chair of Sustainability for Housing, an organisation promoting and developing the ESG Reporting Standards for social housing. He is also a Trustee of Hestia. Prior to taking on these roles he was Chief Executive of Peabody and was a housing association CEO for over 20 years.

Fayann Simpson
Board Member, L&Q

Fayann, who joined the Group Board in 2018, has devoted nearly 20 years to working as an involved resident. For two decades she has worked tirelessly with L&Q and the wider social housing sector to drive continuous improvement in the quality of homes and services. Following the Grenfell tragedy, she has also taken a place on Dame Judith Hackitt's Industry Safety Steering Group, She is currently the Chair for L&Q’s Resident Services Board, Chair of the South Neighbourhood Committee, and a member of L&Q’s Audit and Risk Committee.

Becky Slack
External Affairs Manager, National Housing Federation

Rebecca Slack is an External Affairs Manager at the National Housing Federation. She is the regional lead for North East Member engagement for supported and older people’s housing.

Sarah Smith
Chief Financial Officer, Optivo

Sarah started her career as an external auditor with BDO Stoy Hayward. Specialising in social housing she moved to KPMG. She moved on to London & Quadrant Group and then to AmicusHorizon (now Optivo following merger) in 2009. Sarah chairs the g15 Finance Directors’ Group, is Vice Chair of the NHF’s SORP Working Party and sits on the ICAEW social housing sub-committee. She is also a board member of Lewisham Homes and chairs their Audit & Risk Committee. Sarah was joint winner in 2016 for 'Finance Director of the Year' and 'Overall Winner' at the HANA Awards.

Alan Strickland
Director of External Affairs & Resident Involvement, Optivo

Craig Thornton
Director of Audit & Risk, Sovereign

Craig has been in the social housing sector since joining Sovereign as its Director of Audit and Risk in 2020. He subsequently also joined the Board of Grand Union in 2021. Prior to that he spent the majority of his career in the telecoms sector. He has specialised in internal control disciplines for the past ten years, with senior roles in this field at Vodafone and as an independent consultant. He’s a chartered accountant with a broad range of experience in finance, operations and programme management. Craig was drawn to social housing by his strong sense of social justice and sees the sector playing a fundamental role in eradicating inequality.

James Tickell
Partner, Campbell Tickell

James has been a Partner of Campbell Tickell since 2004. He has carried out a wide range of assignments throughout the UK and the Ireland, primarily for not-for-profit organisations and government agencies. His assignments have focused on governance, mergers, performance improvement, strategy and most recently organisational culture. Some more high profile work has involved helping clients through difficult or unexpected events.

Previously, James has worked as a Director at the Refugee Council, and then at the Housing Corporation, where he was Registrar - a senior post in the department responsible for the regulation of housing associations. Before moving to set up Campbell Tickell, he was Deputy Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, a national campaigns and trade body.

James trained as an architect. He has served as a Board member of various charities and other organisations, including as a government appointee to the Board of an organisation in special measures. He was a trustee of Public Concern at Work, the whistleblowing charity, and also a non-executive Director of McCann Homes Ltd., a developer and housebuilder. He has published books on the Maya and Inca civilisations, as well as on housing-related subjects.

Kate Warburton
External Affairs Manager, National Housing Federation

Kate Warburton is an External Affairs Manager at the National Housing Federation. She is the regional lead for East Midlands and West Midlands as well as the Member engagement lead for levelling up, devolution and coronavirus response.

Keith Ward
Partner, RSM

Keith is a qualified chartered accountant and prior to joining RSM spent six years at a ‘Big 4’ firm specialising in the not for profit sector. He has a large portfolio of social housing clients ranging from large housing associations with 22,000 units to smaller associations with 2,000 units and a number of commercial, construction, retail and care provider clients. Keith is a regular presenter and contributor for social housing conferences and publications, including for the National Housing Federation. He recently presented and chaired sessions at the Housing Finance Conference and Exhibition in March 2019. Keith regularly sits on the judging panel for the National Housing Awards.

Tim Weightman
Group Executive Director, Assets and Investments, Places for People

Tim joined Places for People in 1997 and has over 20 years’ experience of development and investment in relation to the residential asset classes, including PRS, retirement rentals and student housing, and is responsible for the Group’s other investment properties, and its approach to asset performance and strategic asset management. Tim has a degree in Building Surveying and an MBA from Durham University