TPAS - Key Persons
Aasia is an experienced housing professional with over 20 years' experience in the housing sector but her real niche is resident involvement, community development and engagement.
She is committed to ensuring residents voices are heard, making a real difference as to how services are delivered.
Before joining Sovereign in 2008, Aasia worked on several European Social Funded projects, as well as writing major funding applications for the National Lottery.
Aasia has also just completed her PhD in Sociology and Social policy
Job Titles:
- Communications and Marketing Co - Ordinator
Amy joined us in 2021 as Communications Assistant, working on content creation and social media, with a particular interest in video creation. Prior to joining Tpas, Amy studied Digital Media and Communications at University.
Outside of work, Amy enjoys going to the football, going walking, and watching Netflix.
Amy is the Partnership Director for Wates and joins the Tpas Board as an independent representative.
Andy is a strategy, performance improvement and governance expert, working with organisations to support them in achieving excellent outcomes through the application of leading governance practice. He has a strong track record in the fields of organisational change and leadership, and works as a coach and facilitator to improve the individual and collective performance of people working together in teams and on governance bodies.
Andy has a strong background in leadership and governance himself, having operated at Corporate Director and Chief Executive level in the local government and fire and rescue sectors for over 15-years. He also worked in the Welsh civil service as principal advisor to Welsh Government ministers on fire and rescue policy and is the former Her Majesty's Inspector of Fire Services in Wales.
Andy was made an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen in the 2018 New Year Honours, for services to the fire and rescue sector.
Andy brings a wide range of consultancy experience in the housing sector to his role as an associate with Tpas. He has undertaken various reviews to examine issues associated with governance and scrutiny, as well as designing and delivering training and development sessions for the boards of housing providers and resident groups. Andy also has an ongoing role in providing independent support to two tenant representative bodies, and is passionate about ensuring they achieve real impact by positively influencing the governance of the organisations with which they work.
Anna worked as Tpas National Consultancy Manager in March 2020. Anna now works as a Tpas Associate as of April 2023.
Anna has worked in social housing since 1984, developing expertise and experience from employment with 4 local authorities, 3 housing associations, the Housing Inspectorate at the Audit Commission, CIH, Capita and of course many years ago working here at Tpas! In recent years, Anna has run her own management consultancy specialising in service improvement, engagement and the application of behaviour change methodologies.
Billy is a tenant with Southern Housing, one of the largest housing providers in the country, with over 77,000 homes across London, the Southeast, the Isle of Wight, and the Midlands. Billy Chairs their Resident Strategy Group.
Job Titles:
- Policy and Insight Manager
Caritas comes to Tpas with over 20 years of experience in the housing sector at customer facing and strategic levels. His career has so far seen him in a diverse set of roles from being a campaigns lead for a homelessness charity to being a manager for a youth housing project alongside working in engagement roles for 6 different housing associations and local authorities.
Responsible for Tpas Policy and Insight work, Caritas enjoys in his spare time trying to keep up with his daughter and is an avid reader, Sci-Fi Geek and a not-so-secret fan of a good Rom-com.
Cath has been working as a freelance, independent business improvement consultant for more than 10 years. She is a PRINCE2 qualified project manager and a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Working with housing associations and local authorities for over 35 years, Cath specialises in supporting landlords to develop and improve their housing management services.
Since 2020, Cath has been delivering Tpas' unique and innovative project Re-engineering Engagement. Adding to Tpas' unparalleled expertise in resident engagement, Cath challenges landlords to look at the value of resident engagement and influence through the lens of performance improvement and it being good for business.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Representative
Claire is a landlord representative onto the Tpas board. Claire has over 18 years' experience in the sector and works for Flagship Housing as their Director for Digital and Customer Experience.
David is a tenant with Southway Housing Trust based in Manchester. He is Vice Chair of the Board at Southway and a People and Places Committee member.
Dave has worked in social housing for over 30 years In front line , senior management , service Development roles as well as a specialist in customer engagement and representation During this time Dave has worked for large regional housing associations, The chartered institute of housing, regional housing and community consultation agencies and most recently for TPAS.
Dave regularly works on developing consultation best practice with TPAS and recently helped write the TPAS National customer consultation guide for mergers.
Dave's experience as both a Housing association Service development manager and a tenant's advisor have given him a great deal of knowledges of issues on both sides of the fence and how to solve these.
Derek has over 30 years of success supporting tenants and residents of Housing Associations, Local Authorities and ALMO's to get the best service from their landlord.
He was brought up in rented housing and knows the challenges tenants face to get the services they need and how to overcome them.
In recent years Derek has worked to ensure tenants got the best quality of new housing and rehousing offers in major demolition and regeneration schemes, as well as improving overall customer involvement.
Derek has worked for many landlords and worked his way up from being a Lettings Assistant at Nottingham City Council to a Regional Director at Riverside Housing Association, he was also a Non-Executive Director of Spire Homes and Longhurst Homes.
"I am used to working at all levels in housing organisations and know the pressures tenants and residents face to get the best services and real influence over how they are treated".
Elaine joined as a Tpas associate after retiring from full time employment working 22 years in the field of engagement and empowerment.
Elaine has worked with dedication and passion to ensure the customer voice is heard and influences all levels of an organisation. She is skilled at creating opportunities for engagement to be woven into the cultural fabric of housing providers across all service delivery.
Elaine has networked extensively across the housing sector and is a real advocate for the tackling of stigma, and she has supported many colleagues throughout the industry with her experience and knowledge.
Elaine has an in depth understanding of the customer and in particular the position of leaseholders and shared owners, having worked extensively with these customers. Elaine is a leaseholder of a housing association which gives her the chance to see customer experience through that lens.
Ellie has been working in social housing for 14 years, specialising in resident engagement and formal complaint handling. Her experience includes restructuring the service based on tenant feedback and strengthening tenants' roles within the Governance structure, redefining the input and feedback loop between Board, staff and residents.
She is passionate about resident's being heard through formal engagement structures, and more recently through using transactional data and insight to focus on what landlords already know from daily feedback from their residents.
Ellie is also a qualified coach and uses NLP techniques (Neurolinguistic programming) to help strengthen teams, communication, and setting and achieving goals, amongst other things!
Ellie believes engagement should be accessible and flexible to increase opportunities for as many tenants as possible to have their voices heard.
Job Titles:
- National Consultancy Manager
Emma is our newest consultancy manager, joining after working with Tpas for many years as an Associate and as a Senior Manager within Housing Associations. She is a qualified Broadcast Journalist and communications/customer engagement specialist with extensive experience, including for the BBC and across a range of public and charitable sector services.
Emma delivers training, supports scrutiny, conducts reviews and assists in improvement work, including involvement in Behavioural Insights, developing successful methodology to draw out customers' experiences and translate this into actionable insight.
Outside of work Emma is a huge football fan and season ticket holder at Wolves, combining this with a love of music, socialising, and reading when she gets a chance!
Job Titles:
- National Consultancy Manager
Gillian has worked in Social housing for over 14 years in both Local Authorities and Housing Associations. Gillian has a strong experienced background in, Resident Involvement and empowerment and Community Development. Highlights drawn from her 14 years experience include leading a team of Community Development workers on the Better Government for older people project (funded through Government grant).
Job Titles:
- Learning and Development Co - Ordinator
Helen has worked at Tpas for 25 years. She is responsible for the administration and co-ordination of our national training programme (face to face and e-learning) and over 70 in-house training courses being delivered across the country. Helen assisted the training team to deliver the Tenant empowerment Programme, Tenant Central. Helen has extensive experience of working with housing organisations, staff, tenants and residents' groups to promote good practice in tenant involvement.
Jackie has worked in housing sector for 30 years and has been a Tpas Associate for over 10 years. During her career she has managed a sheltered housing service; a leasehold housing service; been a housing manager providing a generic housing service; and she was the Project Manager of a £13m regeneration project in Liverpool which involved demolition of high-rise housing and the creation of a an extra-care village for older people.
She has over 17 years' experience as a housing consultant and ‘Independent Tenant Advisor' (ITA). She has worked on behalf of tenants as they made choices about the future of their homes and has completed 16 Option Appraisal with local authority tenants; and worked on developing 11 stock transfer organisation and an ALMO.
She is a qualified trainer; and teaches and assesses the CIH Professional Practice Certificates. She is currently a non-executive director of Riverside Housing Group's Neighbourhood Services Committee where she sits alongside tenants and independent members.
Her work with Tpas involves training tenants and staff; and she has extensive experience of supporting tenants and landlords to establish co-regulation committees and scrutiny.
She has a clear understanding of the legal, political and financial issues facing housing organisations and uses this understanding to create lively interesting training and consultation events which enable staff and tenants to focus on the key issues facing the business.
Jenny has been Chief Executive since 2014. She started with Tpas in 2002 as Membership Manager which began her continued passion and committment to the Tpas membership family. Jenny is also a board member at Stockport Homes. Before joining Tpas Jenny worked for the Post Office in branch management and HR roles and worked for Scottish and Newcastle Retail based in Leeds in stock control management.
Outside of Tpas Jenny loves her book club, helping out at her local park and is head over heels in love with her cocker spaniel Coco.
Julie has joined us as Head of Consultancy, to lead the consultancy services, and product development work of Tpas.
She has worked alongside Tpas for many years in her roles as Head of Customer & Community for major contractors, including going through and passing our contractors accreditation process. She has also worked as a Consultant, and for a Procurement Consultancy, as well as a Business Partner for a HA.
Julie has been working within Social Housing for over 20 years and previous to that had a career in Recruitment and Account Management.
In her personal time, Julie loves to visit the coast, and the Lake District walking her West Highland Terrier, Baxter, reading, improving her baking skills, and socialising with her lifelong friends, BBQs are a favourite!
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Chairman of Her Tenants Scrutiny
Kai has been the chair for her Tenants Scrutiny panel for two years. In that time, she has carried out three reviews, been involved in stage 2 complaints, assisted shaping policies, interviewed potential staff members and panel members, and been a part of the wider reshaping of the culture of my housing association. Kai has been very vocal in her support for tenants to be more involved with their housing provider and working together to accomplish change, which can be achieved. She has first-hand experience as a social housing tenant and going through the process of engagement to achieve results. This has included working with staff at every level within the organisation and being willing to put biases aside. Kai has also spoken at two conferences with the National Housing Federation (NHF).
Previously, Kai worked at a senior level within healthcare for the NHS and private healthcare organisations. She has completed her BSc (Honours) Psychology and Counselling degree and achieved a British Psychological Society (BPS) accreditation. Kai has also volunteered with Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT) to mentor ex-offenders, with the goal of reducing recidivism. Kai has also worked as a supply teacher for SEND children. She has also completed numerous personal development courses to expand her learning to help to make her better able to engage with tenants and staff to achieve common goals.
Kai really enjoys supporting tenants to engage with their landlord, as all tenants have something to offer, as lived experience provides different perspectives on services. Working within the social housing sector has become a passion for Kai, and there is so much that is yet to be achieved.
Keeley is the newly appointed Finance Manager. She joined Tpas in August 2022.
Keeley has worked in finance for over 20 years at accountancy practices as a management accountant and outsourced business support, working with businesses varying from charities to construction.
Kevin has worked as a housing practitioner in strategic and local authorities, as an executive director of a housing association, and for a voluntary sector homelessness organisation. He has taught at the School of Architecture & Built Environment at the University of Westminster, lecturing on the Masters Housing Practice and Regeneration Programme.
Kevin's career in social housing started in East London in the mid-80s. He worked in estate management and area regeneration in North London during the 1990s. He then spent 10 years working at an executive management level for a pan-London homelessness agency and was Director of Housing & Development for two years, before joining Tpas as an associate 15 years go.
Over the past few years Kevin has worked on a range of resident engagement projects, including:
• Conducting Tpas resident involvement accreditations for local authority and housing association landlords
• Facilitating resident involvement processes at Arches Housing Association, Connect Housing Association, Leeds Federation Housing Association, Riverside and City of Wolverhampton Council
• Consultant to North Star Housing Group, Castles & Coasts, Connect Housing, Riverside, Northwards, Pickering and Ferens Homes and Lincolnshire Housing Partnership, supporting the development of resident-led scrutiny processes
• Independent Community Advisor in Milton Keynes and Manchester on Masterplanning projects
• Delivering a wide range of subjects to a cross-section of audiences for Tpas Training
Job Titles:
- Business Services Officer, PA to Chief Executive
Leanne has been with Tpas for over 9 years and keeps our events engaging, our consultancy team effective and our Chief Executive sane.
Outside of Tpas, Leanne enjoys supporting her partner at Speedway, socialising and is a self-confessed oniomaniac.
Job Titles:
- Membership and Events Co - Ordinator
Lisa has worked at Tpas for over 13 years and spends her days helping our members, answering any questions they may have by email or telephone and ensuring they are getting the best value for money from their membership.
Lisa is also responsible for organising our national conferences, regional events and a host of webinars that our members look forward to attending.
Out of work Lisa enjoys running, chocolate and spending time with her children and cocker spaniel Honey!
Lisa is available to contact Monday - Thursday and loves to hear from you!
Job Titles:
- Head of Membership Services
Louise has spent all her working life in the social housing sector, gaining a wealth of experience and knowledge across both Local Government and Housing Associations. In addition to this practical insight, she also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Housing Studies, a City and Guilds Level 4 teaching qualification and ILM management certificate. Louise started with Tpas in 2001 as an associate delivering training alongside her full-time job, before joining Tpas on a permanent basis in 2016.
Louise has held a variety of Housing jobs including Repairs Assistant, Estate Officer and Housing Manager, but having seen the positive impact of effective engagement on services and communities, she chose to specialise in tenant engagement, and has spent the last two decades working in this field.
She is proud to have grown up in a social housing and that her dad is a council house tenant. Addressing social housing stigma and stereotyping is a big passion of hers, as is tenant led scrutiny and co-creation.
Out of work, Louise is a season ticket holder at Barnsley FC, and enjoys walking and travelling.
Lynda worked for a number of years in local authority housing management, and progressed to a senior position. She changed direction into freelance training and consultancy in 1997, where she uses her extensive housing experience and skills in planning and running both ongoing and one-off training courses and projects.
Lynda is a qualified trainer - City & Guilds 7307. She designs and delivers training on a wide range of subjects, keeping up to date with current housing issues including resident involvement, scrutiny, governance, leasehold and housing management. Her style is informative, informal and lively, with a focus on how law and regulation can be made to work for residents and their landlords.
Lynda really enjoys working with residents and local communities, she has most recently trained:
• Tenant directors of a social enterprise community business
• Resident board members
• Leaseholders on rights & responsibilities
• Scrutiny groups
• Tenants on the context of social housing
Mal Harrison Tpas Associate Mal is a qualified and widely-experienced trainer with more than 20 years' experience working with residents and staff in Local Authorities and Housing Associations across the South West, South and Midlands. Her previous business experience includes roles as a leader and manager in the field of resident involvement, spanning both general needs and supported housing sectors, as well as senior positions in construction, manufacturing and marketing. For a number of years Mal led an award-winning resident involvement team in the supported housing sector. Her passion for resident involvement was a key factor in her team winning a prestigious national award. Mal went on to develop an involvement strategy for one of the country's largest general needs social housing providers. Mal has a special interest in behavioural change, and is a student of psychology. She uses this knowledge, together with her experience of social housing, to design and deliver creative resident involvement training programmes to engage and inspire people and help individuals, teams and organisations to improve their performance by increasing skills, confidence and motivation. Today Mal is a Tpas Associate, an Independent Trainer and Tenant Advisor on regeneration projects, providing training, independent advice services and information on engagement and consultation with community groups, stakeholder groups and project teams.
Mark became an Associate in 2020 and specialises in mentoring Tenant representatives. He is passionate about Housing process, using lean six sigma techniques to improve the customer experience, and making this relevant to value in the wider Public Sector. Also specialises in Local Authority Partnership working, breaking down silos and eliminating waste in challenging times.
A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) for more than 20 years, as well as a CIH Tutor and course author, Mark continues to develop integrated CIH accredited Professional Qualifications, with Apprenticeship Levy Housing Standards.
Mark is a Six Sigma Black Belt and has been the UAE Government's Housing Subject Matter Expert since 2016. In 2021 he has widened his excellence assessments to non-housing entities, including Nuclear Regulation and the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure.
Matthew joined Tpas in 2019 after 35 years working in social housing for London boroughs and housing associations.
His primary focus in housing is to empower residents to become more involved with their landlords, to influence and shape the services they receive.
He has delivered Smart Reviews of housing organisations, reviewing all aspects of service and cross checking with staff and residents to produce an action plan on improvements.
Additionally, Matthew has worked as Tpas Independent Tenant Advisor, where he worked with a Midlands TMO proposing to demolish an estate, as well as a merger between a London and North West housing association. Both projects required honesty, sensitivity and impartiality, as well as a good knowledge of housing policy, procedure, legislation and best practice.
Job Titles:
- Marketing & Communications Manager
Megan started at Tpas on the 1st November 2023 as the new Marketing and Communications Manager. She has a variety of roles within social housing under her belt starting in 2013, before eventually discovering a love and passion for Marketing
Megan is responsible for the marketing and communications strategy within TPAS and in her spare time she enjoys playing netball and cooking.
Sam is based just outside Norwich and has worked as a freelance consultant and trainer since 2005. She is also a former regional manager for Tpas England.
Sam worked as a housing practitioner for over 30 years and became a Tpas associate in 1999 and a Savills associate in 2012. Sam is one of Tpas' key Associates and is in high demand for her expertise in designing involvement and engagement strategies and delivery frameworks. She is also an aspiring trainer with numerous repeat clients.
Sam is passionate about scrutiny and ensuring that the residents voice is heard, listened too and influences service delivery. She is a trained mediator and volunteered with a Braintree mediation service for two years dealing with neighbour and landlord/tenant disputes.
Tonia has working in tenant engagement for over 15 years and is passionate about working in the social housing sector especially when it comes to helping tenants achieve and realise their full potential through engagement and participation.
Tonia is able to work collaboratively and creatively to go the extra mile so that the best outcomes can be achieved and to ensure that tenants are involved and empowered in major decision making.
Tonia has vast experience of leading and delivering all levels of national customer engagement plans within housing providers and constructively builds relationships in order to demonstrate outcomes, gain insight and understanding and raise awareness.
Tonia is an excellent fit to lead the facilitation of the NETV having gained experience in developing and supporting formal tenant bodies to support their influence and decision making. She also has experience of internal and external stakeholder influence with the ability to embed consistent and representative engagement in achieving a tenant voice.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Office for National Statistic As a Community Advisor
- Trainer With Chartered Institute of Housing
Tosin has worked for the Office for National Statistic as a Community Advisor to improve engagement with residents from the Black community. She also has experience of successfully improving the diversity of involved residents to ensure inclusion of voices often unheard.
Tosin is a qualified trainer with Chartered Institute of Housing qualification, Masters in Project Management and qualification in Community Development. She has also been on a board of a TMO and a current member of LocalMotion Enfield, a social, economic, and environmental justice movement.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Board Member of a Pan - London Mentoring Organisation
Yvonne Williams has over 30 years practical experience of registered providers (RP's) and council housing. This includes being Head of Service for a Local Authority and a Housing Association, supporting the setup of an Arm's Length Management Organisation (ALMO) whilst managing a team deemed as being in the top 10% in the UK for delivery.
Yvonne has directly been involved in the preparation of stock transfers/mergers, and restructuring housing services, and has a sound track record of identifying service improvement, forging partnerships, and coordinating ways to implement and drive positive and effective change.
Over the years she has successfully built new teams and managed existing staff - even taking on the responsibility of staff outside her service area at short notice. She has led teams to follow her example to deliver and implement creative projects and solutions within a changing environment; always striving for excellence.
She successfully built and chaired the Barnet Homes Consultative Panel (BHCP) jointly with the residents' movement, which had a borough-wide remit for consultation and dialogue with Barnet Council and Barnet Homes. It was challenging initially but had great outcomes-one being that the chair of the BHCP was eventually handed over to residents.
Following an audit commission inspection her resident engagement and community development team were assessed as providing a 3 star service, putting them in the top 10% of performers across the UK.
Yvonne has represented her organisations at the Local Strategic Partnerships, Domestic Violence Forums - in particular on forced marriage, honour killings and FGM.
She has delivered workshops at national and regional conferences on the positive aspects of engagement.
She has provided support in developing practical models through Lean systems interventions to improve work practices, service delivery, to achieve value for money (VfM) on void turnarounds. This required carrying out a number of interventions and service reviews across the RP she worked for, which positively impacted local authority performance indicators.
She has facilitated training, conferences and away-days for boards, executive leadership teams, housing teams and engaged residents. This includes delivering a range of bespoke workshops for boards, executives, officers and residents, which are interactive, uplifting, practical and humorous in content.
She was an advisory panel member on the working group that developed Brent Civic Centre and Library.
She has been a member of the Panels offering grants to local community projects and helped build a local Neighbourhood Forum, formed in response to the Localism Agenda.
Yvonne was instrumental in setting up and chairing a Multi-Agency Group in response to encountering incidents of anti-social behaviour on a road plagued by open drug dealing, drug taking, prostitution and shop keepers intimidated by criminals running protection rackets. There appeared to be very little if any regulation of parking and/or planning restrictions.
She was able to influence organisations including the Police, services within the local authority including Town Planning, Street Cleaning, and Environmental Health, Ward Working and local businesses and residents to establish a commitment to resolve the issues on the street.
Yvonne is currently experienced Board member of a pan-London mentoring organisation that works closely with local authorities and the government.