Alistair Smyth
Director of Policy and Research, National Housing Federation

Alistair joined the NHF in March 2023 on a 12-month secondment from The Guinness Partnership, where he held the role of Director of External Affairs and Social Investment. Alistair has worked in the social housing sector for the last 15 years in a wide range of roles and organisations including a previous spell at the NHF from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he worked as a consultant on a range of neighbourhood and community empowerment projects. He also spent three years working in a customer-facing role as a Neighbourhood Manager and as Assistant Head of Neighbourhoods for Peabody. He is currently the Vice Chair of the Chartered Institute of Housing’s Policy Advisory Committee.

Hannah Howard-Jones
Director of Asset Management, Home Group

Hannah is Director of Asset Management at Home Group, one of the UK's largest providers of high-quality housing and integrated housing, health and social care.

She was previously Director of Property for Gresham House, a fund manager, where she was responsible for their residential portfolio including shared ownership assets held in two for-profit RPs, ReSI Housing and ReSI Homes, their BTR and retirement PRS portfolios, as well as temporary accommodation.

Prior to Gresham, Hannah worked for Croydon Council’s wholly-owned development company, Brick By Brick, as Head of Property & Engagement where she oversaw acquisitions/ disposals, open market sales, the management of their completed developments and stakeholder/ community engagement.

She has also held senior positions working for FTS250 private family office with PRS and long leasehold investments, as well as in private practice on behalf of a variety of clients including Resident Management Companies, private freeholders and HNWIs.

Hannah is a Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyor, specialising in residential asset management.

Edward Anton
Head of Assets, Contracts & Procurement, Grand Union Housing Group

Peter Apps
Deputy Editor, Inside Housing

Pete Apps is an award-winning housing journalist, who has covered the social housing sector for more than a decade at leading industry publication Inside Housing. His work has also appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The New Statesman and Private Eye. His book on the Grenfell Tower fire, Show Me The Bodies, won the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2023.

Darya Bahram
Research Associate, King’s College London

Darya is an experienced and successful individual with track record gained at the highest possible levels in senior roles at ACA and CBC.

Darya is a published author, researcher and speaker on a range of topics including: “More efficient Construction Procurement models”, “Blockchain & Smart Contract”, “Disruptive Technology and Collaborative Contracts”, “MMC: contractual mechanisms building long term relationship”, “Zero or nothing -Sustainability through Procurement & Contracts”.

Bethan Buck
Head of Member Relations, National Housing Federation

Emma Burton
Director of Asset Management and Building Safety, Bromford

Rob Bywater
Head of Assets, Ashton Pioneer Homes

Helen Ball
Senior Sustainability Manager, Broadacres

Rupesh Bhatt
Director of Data, Peabody

Jo Barrett
Executive Director of Operations, Thrive Homes

Jo joined Thrive Homes in June 2008, previously having worked at Stevenage Borough Council as their Director of Technical Services and was involved in the setting up of Stevenage Homes in 2006. This was an Arms Length Management Organisation responsible for the management of the Council's housing stock.

With a career spanning over 30 years in housing, Jo has extensive experience of strategic asset management, day-to-day repairs and maintenance, and refining customer experience. Jo has developed Thrive’s Active Asset Management Strategy, bringing together asset, finance and development to ensure investment in homes maintains quality, and improves energy efficiency whilst achieving value for money.

This experience has helped Jo deliver acquisitions and contracts to manage on behalf of others whilst managing Thrive Places – homes for market rent.

Jo obtained a BSc in Building Surveying in 1994 and qualified as a Chartered Building Surveyor in 1995. She is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and chairs the National Housing Federation's Quality of Existing Homes Group.

Lucy Breeze
Sustainability Manager, Golding Homes

Lucy is an experienced and passionate sustainability professional, with a background in climate change strategy development and delivery within the public sector. Lucy joined Golding Homes in 2021 to develop the organisation's strategic approach to sustainability and route map to Net Zero by 2050. Having secured Golding's SHIFT Gold accreditation and overseeing a success SHDF wave 2 bid, Lucy is focused on embedding sustainability throughout the organisation.

Cecily Church
Head of Sustainability, Fairhive

Sam Collier
Head of Market Intelligence, HomeLINK

Polly Cox
Sector Learning and Development Manager, Housing Ombudsman

Ruth Dent
Director of Assets and Compliance, Believe Housing

An asset professional with extensive experience in social housing, Ruth Dent is Director of Assets and Compliance at County Durham-based housing association believe housing.

Her strength in data analytics ensures robust asset information is used effectively to assess the performance of 18,000 varied properties and to develop place-based approaches to investment.

She steers an ambitious environmental plan for both business and property portfolios.

Ruth leads on extensive upgrading and retrofitting schemes, incorporating new technology where appropriate, and seeks external funds to maximise the impact of works.

She works with all parts of the business to promote efficient and innovative ways of working and is passionate about good customer service and engagement.

Gillian Douglas
Executive Director of Housing, Lewisham Council

Jane Duncan
Chair, Fire Safety, RIBA Expert Advisory Group

Jane Duncan Architects & Interiors Ltd was set up in Little Chalfont, Bucks, in 1992.

The Award-winning practice specialises in high-end residential schemes including sustainable houses, historic buildings, commercial, education, schools and community buildings, principally throughout the South of England.

Jane campaigns for improved business skills in architecture and won the election for RIBA Presidency in 2014 on a manifesto to increase diversity in the profession.

Awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2018 for services to diversity in the profession, she was made an Honorary Fellow of AIA in 2019.

Jane’s current advocacy, post Grenfell, is to influence government fire safety regulations, and improve competence, collaboration, skills and accountability in the construction industry. She:

· Chairs the RIBA Expert Panel on Fire Safety after Grenfell 2017 to present.

· Served as RIBA President from 2015 to 2017

· Was first RIBA Equality & Diversity Champion from 2012 – 2015.

· Is a founder member of Equilibrium Network, to promote gender diversity at the top of organisations across the built environment.

· Is a founder of YADA, bringing together young architects and developers.

James Dyson
Senior Researcher, E3G

Cym D’Souza
Chief Executive, Arawak Walton Housing Association

Cym previously served as Chief Executive of Manchester-based Arawak Walton Housing Association, stepping down last autumn after almost 25 years in the post.

Ms D’Souza is a well-known figure in UK housing having served from 2012-23 as Chair of BME National, the umbrella body for black and minority ethnic (BME) housing associations.

Cym is a qualified chartered accountant, she has been a member of numerous boards in the commercial and housing sectors and was recently appointed Vice Chair of Church Housing Association, established by the Church of England following the publication of a groundbreaking report by the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community.

Marc Edwards
Director of Asset and Sustainability, Gentoo Group

Marc is the Director of Asset and Sustainability at Gentoo Group. Marc’s current responsibilities include Stock Condition, Strategic Asset Management, Investment Delivery, Asset Sustainability and a number of Property Compliance areas including Asbestos Management. Marc is a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers and holds a non-executive position at Keelman Homes. Marc has previously worked in a range of registered providers in the North East including Northstar and have previously oversaw services delivering Repairs and Maintenance, Procurement and Customer Services. Marc is committed to delivering excellent customer services and has led on the delivery of some significant fire remediation, retrofit and sustainability improvements to high rise blocks in Sunderland including Gentoos pioneering and award winning Core 364 project.

Adrian Eggington
Deputy Chief Exeuctive, Black Country Housing Group

Adrian has been at BCHG since November 2015 having previously worked in executive roles for Housing Associations in London and Staffordshire with specialisms in housing and asset management, care and resident engagement. Adrian has responsibility for the operations team, asset management, development and our home improvement agency, Homeforce, which provides repairs and home improvements to people who own their own homes and residential care.

Alexia Evans
Investment and Asset Strategy Director, Sovereign Network Group

Julie Evans
Chief Property Officer, Curo Group

Julie was appointed Executive Director of Property Services in 2019, having previously held a number of directorships with Curo since joining in 2006 when the business was called Somer Housing Group. Julie’s prior roles within the Group have included Director of Tenancy Services, Director of Customer Services, Director of Neighbourhood Services and, most recently, Director of Asset Management.

Julie is a career housing professional with over 30 years’ experience in both English and Welsh housing sectors, starting her career as a trainee housing manager in 1988. She brings a proven track record of success in operational, strategic and transformational leadership roles in addition to seven years’ experience of strategic direction-setting and change implementation as a non-executive director of a Bristol community housing provider, United Communities. She currently acts as a governor on the board of Bath College.

Nik Flytzanis
Senior Director Contract Solutions, Plentific

Nik Flytzanis is the Senior Director Supply Chain Solutions e at Plentific. He owns global responsibility for the commercial success of Plentific’s AI-powered supply chain solutions, including contractor management and service optimisation, dynamic purchasing system management and bespoke supplier sourcing solutions, to ensure clients receive outstanding services.

Nik has spent over 15 years designing and implementing managed services and SaaS solutions that transform the built environment. He has held a variety of commercial leadership positions in the real estate industry spanning property operations, commercial and facilities management. Nik has worked for FTSE 100, Fortune 500 and local enterprises, including CBRE, Alcumus and Compass UK&I, across commercial property, facilities management, corporate risk and supply chain management.

Nik is passionate about decarbonising the built environment and interested in using technology to unlock the retrofit economy, so that landlords can deliver programmes of works at scale whilst supporting the local SME economy. He is also focused on

helping small contractors and trade businesses grow by connecting them with job opportunities in their local communities. As an ardent advocate of sustainability and decarbonisation, Nik frequently speaks on ESG issues and chairs panel debates. Nik holds several certifications, including ISO 14001:2018 and ISO 9001:2015 Foundations from IRCA auditor certification and a COSHH Foundation (2020) from Alcumus. He is also a member of the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management and the Chartered Institute of Housing.

Thomas Fountain
Strategic Asset Management Director, Places For People Group

Hilary Grayson
Director, Sava

Hilary Grayson joined Sava in 2003 and is now a Director focusing much of her time on the development of new qualifications.

Following a degree in Estate Management at Southbank Polytechnic (now LSBU), Hilary qualified as a General Practice Surveyor in 1983 leading her to work for private consultancies in London and Bromley Council before joining RICS at Great George Street. She joined Surveyors and Valuers Accreditation Ltd which was later acquired by NES Ltd (now Sava). At Sava, she went on to set up the original assessment centre and created the Diploma in Residential Surveying and Valuation.

Hilary enjoys making art in her garden studio, walking her dogs by the Grand Union Canal, modern art and listening to vintage radio dramas. She is also a trustee at Westbury Arts Centre in Shenley Wood here in Milton Keynes.

Nichola Harrison
Chair, Lambeth and Southwark Housing Association

Nichola is Chair for the Lambeth and Southwark Housing Association Board and a non-executive director for Amber Housing. As well as extensive non executive experience within the housing sector, Nichola is a Chartered Fellow of IOSH and has a varied career in health and safety. This includes being the Competent Person for Paradigm and Shepherds Bush Housing Associations as well a construction experience with Balfour Beatty and EMCOR UK.

Kate Henderson
Chief Executive, National Housing Federation

Kate Henderson is Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF), the voice of housing associations in England. Kate is passionate about tackling the housing crisis, inequality and climate change. She is a member of several government panels including the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel and the Social Housing White Paper Expert Challenge Panel. Kate become a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2021. Prior to joining the NHF in 2018, Kate was Chief Executive of the Town and Country Planning Association.

Jason Holder
Director of Property, Greensquare Accord

Rory Hughes
Policy Officer, National Housing Federation

Claire Hyland
Data and Analytics Director, Sovereign Network Group

Claire Hyland is an accomplished, ambitious and focused Digital, Data and Analytics Executive. Highly skilled in the delivery of large scale and complex Data and Digital Transformations that positively impact strategic decision-making. A driven and innovative problem solver with a passion for employee engagement and excellent customer service.

Dave Newton OBE
Head of Heat Networks Consumer Protection, Standards and Skills, Department of Energy Security and Net Zero

Dave has worked for over 15 years in a range of energy policy and leadership roles, most notably in Gas and Electricity consumer and vulnerable consumer policy, where he worked with industry and consumer groups to ensure consumers were protected during the pandemic. Dave is also a member of a number of industry advisory groups involved in supporting energy consumers, including for the Fuel Bank Foundation challenge panel and the Energy UK Fuel Poverty Advisory Board.

Stephen Johnson
Panel Member, Tenant Advisory Panel

Stephen Johnson was born in London and has lived in North Kensington since 1994. For many years, Stephen has been actively involved in his local community that was badly affected by the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

He is a strong advocate of social housing residents holding their landlord to account by carrying out effective resident-led scrutiny and accountability of their performance.

Since 2014 has been Chair of the Kensington and Chelsea Scrutiny Panel for residents of Notting Hill Genesis. In May 2019 Stephen became a member of the Tenant Advisory Panel working alongside the National Housing Federation to help promote and support the landmark Together with Tenants Charter.

Steve Kirk
Director of Maintenance Operations, Citizen

Chris Lees
Chief Executive, Data Clan

Annie Owens
Policy Leader, National Housing Federation

Katherine Proctor
Director of Housing Operations, Unity Homes & Enterprise

Khalid Mair
Chair, Imani Housing Co-operative

Khalid Mair is a Founder member of - Imani Housing Coop Ltd (54 Homes) a Black-led fully mutual coop operating in Wandsworth for over 35 years. Khalid also provides Executive Support for BME London Landlords a collaboration of 13 BME led Housing Associations in London. Khalid's work goes back over 40 year's, working with a number of organisation's and settings where the customers were social housing tenants and people of colour. As a lifelong carer for a family member diagnosed with a mental health condition, Khalid brings to this session his experience of living with mental health as a carer and his views around creating solutions to the challenges that social landlords face within their organisations and amongst the residents and communities they serve.

James Marley
Head of Construction and Investment, Broadacres

Adam Masters
Assistant Director Environment and Sustainability, Stonewater

Sarah McClelland
Associate Director, Sustainability, RISE

Amanda Newton
Chief Executive, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing

Mark Newstead
Director of Major Programmes, L&Q

Mark joined L&Q as Director of Major Programmes in 2022. He is responsible for L&Q’s 15 year £3billion stock investment programme.

Mark is passionate about improving homes and services to social housing residents, tackling climate change, and creating social value.

Mark is a Chartered Construction and Health and Safety professional with over 30 years’ experience in Social Housing working for housing associations and councils. Prior to joining L&Q, Mark held director level posts covering property services, health and safety, regeneration, and development.

Amanda Newton
Chief Executive, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing

Liz O’Connor
Housing Director, Horton Housing

Petronila Osodo
Head of Remediation, Notting Hill Genesis

Petronila is qualified Projects Professional with key international experience in the implementation and delivery of large and complex projects and programmes of over £300 Million. This covering the full building lifecycle from development, construction, capital works to remediation and disposal. Petronila has worked in strategic advisory, mixed use, residential, commercial, retail, education, manufacturing, and public sectors. Currently, she is leading the building safety remediation team at Notting Hill Genesis(NHG) in the delivery of the NHG’s building safety programme. Petronila has developed an exceptional delivery team with a strong bias for action along with successfully establishing and implementing processes and procedures that have ensured building safety remediation has moved from a reactive part of the business to business as usual.

Jack Ostrofsky
Retrofit London Programme Director, London Councils

Yogeta Partridge
Director, Rydeo Consulting

Yogeta has been in the housing sector for almost two decades. She is a solicitor by trade, who started working with the sector whilst at a main sector law firm – acting on behalf of housing associations and lenders using properties to secure against debt. She then had an opportunity to do a six month secondment at L&Q – which turned into a 13 year career. Whilst at L&Q, Yogeta created and embedded a robustly governed thread that flowed through the lifecycle of the homes from land to development through to treasury to optimise future financial opportunities – including the granular detail on legal ownership for L&Q’s entities. For the wider sector, Yogeta created and led two working groups to encourage greater collaboration and open forums to discuss and overcome obstacles, identify solutions and share best practices. These two working groups, ‘Legal Treasury Group’ for housing associations and the connected group ‘Property Finance Working Group’ with law firms and valuers, continue to strongly benefit the sector.

Yogeta’s passion to use her expertise and skillset to help more housing associations and benefit the wider sector led her to create her own consultancy, Rydeo Consulting Limited, in June 2023. Through Rydeo, Yogeta is currently working with housing associations as a consultant to executive teams, carrying out independent reviews of existing processes and procedures to identify and embed efficiencies, and using her expertise as a resource to project manage transactions whilst creating and embedding proactive strategies to reduce the ‘reactive nature’ of these transactions. Yogeta is also providing her expertise, through Rydeo, to other organisations to identify wider sector solutions to some of the many challenges.

James Prestwich
Director of Policy and External Affairs, Chartered Institute of Housing

James Prestwich is the director of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Housing. He leads our influencing and public affairs work across the UK. Before joining CIH in early 2020 from the National Housing Federation (NHF), he held the role of head of policy.

Dr Rokia Raslan
Professor, Built Environment Decarbonisation, University City London Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering

Rokia is a Professor in Built Environment Decarbonisation at the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering. Her research is concerned with evidence-based building adaptation and mitigation policy and strategy with a focus on understanding ‘complex to decarbonise ‘homes and developing retrofit solutions that respond to their needs

Matt Sharp
CEO, Association of Safety and Compliance Professionals (ACP)

Jon Slade
Director, Campbell Tickell

Guy Slocombe
Chief Investment Officer, Hyde

Guy runs our investment, development and partnerships divisions. He leads our engagement with responsible private capital and for creating the partnerships that enable us to invest that capital to build more homes.

He also oversees our growing development programme, and the management of our homes and commercial assets, to ensure the value in the properties we already own can be used to help us build more.

Guy is a Chartered Surveyor and has an MSc in Real Estate Investment. Before joining Hyde, he spent 20 years in consultancy and was Head of City Investment at Nelson Bakewell (now Capita) and Partner at Drivers Jones (now Deloitte), where he also managed European institutional and private equity fund mandates.

He was CEO of boutique private equity-backed Clarenco, a property investment and development business, and was employed by Westminster Council to turn around its commercial property investment portfolio.

Hannah Spungin
Implementation Manager, Bristol City Leap

Keith Todd
Partner, Fire Engineering, Ridge

Keith is a fire safety professional with experience in fire safety design and fire risk assessment. He is an elected member of two of the Fire Industry Association’s Councils (Fire Engineering Council and Fire Risk Assessment Council).

Keith has worked in fire safety since 2006 and leads the fire safety discipline at the Ridge London Office. He has comprehensive experience with fire risk assessments, strategy development, and implementation across a broad spectrum of building types, including retrofitting and upgrading fire safety measures in existing buildings.

Keith is a chartered building engineer and an incorporated engineer and holds a first-class honours degree in fire risk engineering. He is also an IFE-registered fire risk assessor and BAFE SP205 fire risk assessment validator. His expertise is not only recognised through his academic achievements and professional registrations but also through prestigious awards, including Fire Safety Manager of the Year 2022, and his research on fire modelling and human behaviour in heritage buildings was honoured with the Research Project of the Year by the Worshipful Company of Firefighters.

Skills

Fire risk assessment, fire safety design, strategic fire safety planning project management, regulatory compliance, leadership in fire safety discipline, communication and training, technical proficiency, and experience with historic and listed buildings.

Helen Town
Group Director of Property and Partnerships, Watford Community Housing Group

Becky Utuka
Executive Director – Asset & Development, Saxon Weald

Becky joined Saxon Weald in January 2024. She is passionate about housing as a fundamental need and creating opportunities. With a background in asset management, development and sales, Becky brings expertise in real estate, design, investment, development, and surveying. Over the years, she has worked for various housing providers including Gateway Housing, Family Mosaic, Swan Housing, and Network Homes. Becky was an alumni Board Member for Future of London and currently serves as a Non-Executive Director for Citizen Housing's Development Committee.

Neil Yeomans
Head of Property Safety and Technology, Orbit

Neil is the Head of Customer Safety for Orbit Housing. He joined Orbit in after they became the first housing association ever to be downgraded by the regulator for fire safety reasons. Neil has helped take Orbit from this low point through to becoming the first National housing association to become PAS 7 accredited and the first ever to win a RoSPA Gold award for customer safety. Neil comes from a regulatory background himself, as he used to work in an Environmental Health department, specialising in Housing Standards. He made the leap into housing 7 years ago and is passionate about helping improve customer safety standards across the sector.

Ian Joynson
Executive Director of Asset Management, The Guinness Partnership

Ian joined Guinness as an Executive Director in September 2014 and is responsible for asset management, including asset strategy and compliance, responsive and planned maintenance, and health and safety. He is a qualified accountant and prior to joining Guinness, spent a number of years with KPMG, working with housing associations across the country. Ian started his career at the Housing Corporation in both regulatory and investment roles.

As a large national landlord, Guinness has been heavily involved in recent years in optimising its portfolio through significant acquisitions and disposals of homes, and through the completion of one of the largest stock swaps in recent years. This activity remains an ongoing focus for Guinness.