Helen Collins (Chair)
UK Board Director, Head of Affordable Housing Consultancy, Savills
Helen has been a Director at Savills since 2012. She leads Savills Affordable Housing Consultancy and sits on the UK Board. Helen’s team provides a range of strategic and property consultancy advice to housing associations, local authorities, investors and developers.
Helens’ career spans 30 years working senior advisory and delivery roles, Helen specialises in public/ private sector initiatives for growth, partnerships, and in asset optimisation. Recent projects include Homes England’s Strategic Partnership initiative, and delivery of a number of landmark affordable housing portfolio transactions. Helen is a Fellow and Former President of the Chartered Institute of Housing and a Professional member of the RICS and a regular speaker on the industry conference circuit.
Jack Burnham
Head of Affordable Housing, Octopus Real Estate
Peter Denton
Chief Executive, Homes England
Peter Denton is the Chief Executive Officer of Homes England.
Peter joined Homes England in August 2021. Prior to this, he was Group Finance Director and subsequently Chief Executive Officer of housing association The Hyde Group.
He has worked in a broad range of strategic leadership roles, amassing 27 years of pan-European real estate experience.
Before joining the housing sector, Peter spent his early career in investment banking and then moved to global real estate investment management firm Starwood Capital.
During his investment career, Peter deployed over €25 billion of capital and had significant exposure to investors and fundraising on a global scale, working as a ‘bridge’ between the public, private and third sector.
In addition, Peter has held senior EMEA real estate investment banking roles at BNP Paribas, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Eurohypo and WestImmo. He is also a non-executive Real Estate Investment Committee member at global investment company Eurazeo.
Joanne Drew
Strategic Director of Housing and Regeneration, Enfield Council.
Joanne is an experienced senior housing leader that has worked across the UK for central, regional and local government, for housing associations and a national social justice charity driving transformation and the delivery of better outcomes for people, places and communities.
She is passionate about preventing and reducing homelessness and ensuring quality services and homes that enable people to thrive. Joanne is the
Shamez Alibhai
Managing Director and Head of Community Housing, Man Group
Shamez Alibhai is Head of Community Housing and Managing Director at Man Global Private Markets (‘Man GPM’). He leads a team that aims to provide viable housing investments that deliver significant social and environmental benefits to communities.
Prior to joining Man GPM in January 2019, Shamez spent 12 years at Cheyne Capital, where he was a partner and portfolio manager of the UK’s first institutional affordable housing strategy. He previously co-ran the firm’s real estate debt business.
Shamez holds Master’s degrees from Yale University and McGill University.
Andrew van Doorn
Chief Executive, HACT
Andrew is the Chief Executive of HACT. HACT partners with organisations across the housing sector to drive value for residents and communities through insight-led products and services which encourage innovation and foster collaboration. HACT helps them measure their social value, better understand the communities they serve, broker collaborations with the NHS, and connect with like-minded organisations.
Andrew has worked for HACT for 20 years and in housing, homelessness, supported housing, community development and wider social policy and practice for over 30 years. He is a Non-Executive Director at Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. Andrew was awarded an OBE in the King’s New Year Honours List 2023 for services to housing.
Steve Partridge
Director - Housing Consultancy, Savills
Steve is a senior leader and highly regarded national expert in UK housing finance with nearly 30 years’ experience in the public and private housing sectors in business planning, investment appraisal, financing and the development of new homes.
Steve leads Savills’ work on building funding and delivery capacity with UK-based local authorities and housing associations, to help deliver new homes at scale, and also specialises in working to bring new sources of private investment and housing providers together to introduce new and innovative ways to bring private finance into the development of affordable housing. He leads work on setting up new housing providers, raising capital for investment into non-profit and for-profit housing providers, and helped traditional housing providers access these new sources of capital.
Allen Twyning
Head of Affordable Housing, Pension Insurance Corporation
Simon Century
Managing Director - Housing, Legal & General
Simon Century joined L&G in 2016 and is a Managing Director for Housing. Simon is responsible for leading L&G’s investment strategy across the residential housing sectors. In 2018, Simon founded L&G’s wholly owned affordable housing business, Legal & General Affordable Homes and in 2020 Legal & General's Suburban Build to Rent business. Simon is responsible for L&G growing investment portfolio across other residential platforms including leading L&G’s participation into the later living joint venture with Natwest Group Pension Fund, the joint venture into the urban build to rent with PGGM as well as sitting on the board of L&G Modular Homes.
Simon’s career has spanned residential real estate, corporate finance and corporate strategy. He joined from the affordable housing provider, bpha where he was an executive committee member responsible for strategy and corporate finance. Prior to bpha, Simon worked at the advisory and investment firm, TradeRisks, advising clients in the infrastructure and quasi-government sectors.
Simon is a full Member of the Association of Corporate Treasurers and holds the Certificate in Investment Management from the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.
Mary Parsons
Regeneration and Partnerships Director, Lovell
Mary has over 25 years’ experience in the development, construction and regeneration industry; working across the private, Housing Association and consultancy sectors. She has been involved in some of the largest housing-led regeneration programmes in the UK. She was with Places for People Group for 15 years and was a Group Main Board Director for a decade, responsible for their large scale developments and new places. She joined Lovell in 2020, a major national housebuilder and part of the Morgan Sindall Group as national Regeneration & Partnerships Director and Divisional Board member. Her current responsibilities include a number of strategic joint ventures with public sector partners including Suffolk, Hertfordshire and West Sussex County Councils.
Mary is past Chair of the Town & Country Planning Association, was a Commissioner for the National Housing Federation’s national Great Places Commission, for the Government’s Building Better Building Beautiful Commission and the ‘No Place Left Behind’ Commission into levelling up and community-led regeneration. She is a member of the University of Cambridge’s Property Board including their award winning new neighbourhood at Eddington and is Trustee and Chair of MOBIE, an education and skills charity founded by TV Presenter and Architect, George Clarke, to attract the next generation into housing and construction.
Geeta Nanda
Chief Executive, Metropolitan Thames Valley
Geeta is Chief Executive of MTVH (Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing) a leading national provider of affordable homes to rent and buy. Across a career of nearly 30 years, she has held a variety of leadership roles in the housing sector. Geeta was Chief Executive of Thames Valley Housing for nine years, and then Chief Executive of Metropolitan from October 2017, before the two organisations merged. She established the highly successful market rent subsidiary, Fizzy Living, in 2012.
Geeta has served on the boards of a number of other housing organisations and was Chair of the G15 group of London’s largest housing associations, which collectively provides home to one in ten Londoners and builds a quarter of the capital’s new homes. Geeta is a Board member of the National Housing Federation, a non-Executive member of PRS REIT plc, the UK’s first quoted real estate investment trust to focus on high-quality new-build family homes for the private rental market, and an Ambassador for the charity World Child Cancer.
In 2013, Geeta was awarded an OBE for achievements in social housing, and in 2021 received the ‘Outstanding Individual’ award at the EG Awards in recognition of her achievements and position as a ‘role model’ within the sector.
Grainne Gilmore
Director of Research & Insights, Cluttons
Gráinne is director of research & insight. Before joining Cluttons she held positions at Zoopla, as head of research, and at Knight Frank where she was head of UK residential research, leading the teams producing insights on all aspects of UK sales, lettings, residential development and the specialist BTR, student and later living housing sectors. Gráinne started her career at The Times, where she was an award-winning finance and economics journalist.
Paddy Dowdall
Assistant Executive Director, Greater Manchester Pension Fund
Paddy is Assistant Executive Director at Greater Manchester Pension Fund with responsibility for Property, Local Investments and GLIL, which he co-founded and where he sits on the GLIL Investment Committee.
Paddy is well known for his innovative approach to investing. He has been a pioneer in leading LGPS investing in housing and property development in the North West of England with the twin aims of achieving commercial returns for his funds whilst having a positive impact on the local economy.
Paddy has significant experience of investment in a wide range of assets including listed securities, infrastructure, private equity and property and has previously worked at Merseyside Pension Fund. Paddy is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and a graduate of Durham University.
Mark Henderson
Chief Executive, Home Group
Mark is Chief Executive of Home Group, with over 113,000 customers across 55,000 properties in England and Scotland, which includes around 15,000 people with mental and physical health issues. Home Group is also one of the largest developers of housing in the UK with a turnover of some £430 million per annum.
Mark is currently a Board Member for Homes England and a trustee of Whiteley Homes Trust. He was also a former Board Member for the National Housing Federation and former Chair of Homes for the North. He previously ran his own business before joining Home Group, before that had worked with the RDA as Operations Director and a variety of regeneration and economic development jobs across the country in local government, most recently as Chief Executive of one of the largest County Councils in the country.
Mark is a petrol head, he races a Yamaha in classic motorcycle races and is a season ticket holder at Newcastle United.
John Anderson
Chief Executive, Allison Homes
Sue Edmonds
Chief Executive, Capital Letter
Sue joined Capital Letters in June 2019 as its first chief executive officer. She has extensive experience in social housing, both operationally and as a non executive director, and her driving force has been to make a positive difference, working innovatively and creatively to do so.
Prior to joining Capital Letters, she was director of partnerships at Rentplus and she has held numerous senior level roles in social housing, including as group director of housing and communities at DCH Group and as managing director of Three Valleys Housing and OGL Housing. She is currently a non-executive director of Westward Housing Group.
Catherine Webster
Chief Executive, Thriving Investments
Jacqueline Jackson
Chief Sustainability Officer, London CIV
Jacqueline leads London CIV’s commitment to responsible investment by developing and implementing strategies designed to mitigate financial risks arising from environmental and socioeconomic issues. Providing oversight of London CIV’s fund range with regards to ESG performance and compliance. Prior to joining London CIV, Jacqueline worked in ESG consultancy for seven years at Trucost and S&P Global (home of the world’s first environmental profit and loss account in 2013).
Jacqueline has experience delivering public speaking on sustainability and drafting environmental publications. Over the last eighteen years she has advised institutional investors, corporations and governments on how to interpret exposure and impact associated with natural resource constraints to help inform resilience and identify the transformative solutions of tomorrow. Jacqueline read Fine Art at The University of Oxford achieving a 1st and scholarship in 2008 and returned in 2019 to study Sustainable Finance. She has delivered training at the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at The University of Cambridge, led the development of the Asset Owner Diversity Charter and is an ambassador of The Diversity Project.
Chris Jeffs
Director - Fund Management, M&G
Chris is the Fund Manager for the M&G Shared Ownership Fund. Over his career he has transacted over £1 billion of real estate across the commercial, residential and alternative sectors. Prior to his role as fund manager, Chris worked as the Head of Industrial and Logistics, responsible for the strategic management of over £3 billion of assets across the UK. Before that, he was an investment manager in the retail team, responsible for c.£1.6 billion of retail and leisure assets. Prior to joining M&G Real Estate in 2014, Chris worked in BNP Paribas Real Estate’s Recovery and Restructuring department leading the asset management and disposal of distressed residential portfolios with a value of c.£200m on behalf of banking clients.
Chris has an MSc in Property Development from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, is a member of RICS, the IPF, a member of the British Property Federation Affordable Housing Committee and is a qualified Law of Property Act (LPA) Receiver.