HOUSING OMBUDSMAN - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Independent Commissioner
Andrea joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in September 2015 as the Director of Finance and Corporate Performance. She was Interim Housing Ombudsman for a short time and was then appointed as Chief Operating Officer.
She is a qualified Chartered Accountant with over 20 years' experience. She previously worked for the National Audit Office (NAO) where she held roles overseeing the audits of a wide range of government departments and their arm's-length bodies. She was also part of the technical support team, leading on a range of interventions aimed at improving governance, and was seconded to the House of Commons Scrutiny Unit.
Outside of work, Andrea is an Independent Commissioner the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and an Associate Governor at a maintained primary school, attending its Finance and Resources Committee. She is also a review team member of the International Ombudsman Institute's peer review panel.
Job Titles:
- Head of Finance & Procurement
Ayo joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in February 2023.
Ayo has over 20 years' experience within the private and public sector with adept experience of setting up and supporting ‘local authority trading companies' across housing, adult social care, and the education services. Having sat on every seat within the modern finance functions; she brings on significant knowledge and experience in financial and budget management, financial reporting, and financial forecasting to enable executive decision making.
Ayo has been a part of decision making and influencing board committee over the last few years and has successfully led various initiatives and projects improving efficiencies, increasing profitable margins, and enabling sustained business growth with the trading companies within local government.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
Christina has extensive senior executive and non-executive experience of audit and risk assurance. Formerly Chair of the Audit & Risk Management Committee of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she currently serves on the Audit Committee of the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama.
Her career has included a variety of roles in local government and the third sector, specialising in education, culture, social care and regeneration. Ensuring fairness and transparency, and enabling support for the most disadvantaged have been consistent themes in her work.
During her 13 years as CEO of the National Foundation for Youth Music she worked effectively with government departments, non-departmental public bodies and sector organisations on policy and grant schemes. She also formed influential partnerships for improved service delivery.
In non-executive roles she continues to focus on corporate governance, organisational effectiveness and sector engagement.
Daniel joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in January 2023.
Daniel has over 10 years' experience in the profession, holding a number of leadership roles covering a broad range of communications and marketing disciplines. He brings significant experience of the housing sector, having worked for charities, think tanks, a housing association and regional and national government.
Daniel was part of the executive team at the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, responsible for promoting the region as an attractive place to live, work, invest and travel, and providing advice to the Mayor, MCA Board and Local Enterprise Partnership.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
David has extensive executive and governance experience ranging from roles in urban regeneration, social housing and engineering, and pension and committee board. From September 2012 until September 2023, David was a Board Member and Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee of Estuary Housing Association.
Working in the further and higher sectors since 2002, David has been involved in Chief Financial Officer roles with a broad portfolio of leadership responsibilities including audit and risk management, business continuity planning, student admissions and record systems, estate management, strategic campus master planning and development and IT.
David's other governance roles include social housing (Board member Coin Street Housing Co-Operative and independent member of the Stonewater Housing Risk and Assurance Committee) and the Social Housing Pension Scheme (Committee member).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
Gill has worked in the public sector overseeing strategy and change, customer services and stakeholder engagement. She was Director of Freedom of Information at the Information Commissioner's Office and Director of Strategy and Insight at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Earlier in her career she worked at the London Borough of Sutton leading the council's strategy, equalities, engagement and customer services functions. She now works freelance and is a qualified coach.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
- Trustee
- Governance and Risk Director
Hiten is Governance and Risk Director with an international technology organisation. He has also been a non-executive director for 20 years, working at board level, providing strategic, organisational, financial, and corporate direction. His experience covers governance, legal, compliance, people and culture, IT (digital and cybersecurity), QI (quality improvement), services, audit and risk management.
This has been across social housing, regulated, not-for-profit and third sector organisations. Hiten has served as Chair, Trustee and Governing Board Member, Chair of Audit and Risk and Chair of Finance Committees during this time, completing full terms at the Chartered Institute of Housing and Severn Vale Housing. He is a Board Member at The Pioneer Housing and Community Group, and member of its Audit and Assurance Committee.
Justin joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in August 2023 as the Director of Dispute Support and Resolution. Justin brings over 15 years' experience of working in social housing with 8 years' experience working in a variety of both operational and strategic senior management positions. These roles have included overseeing large front line customer facing teams, leading complaint management functions and the delivery of transformational programmes.
Justin holds a degree in Psychology and is a member of the Charted Institute of People Development. Outside of work Justin has held positions as an Advisory Board member within a local council and a Trustee for a local food charity.
Kathryn joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in June 2022 as the Director of Quality, Engagement and Development. She has worked in social housing since 1991 in a range of roles from front line housing management to strategic business planning and as Head of Quality and Performance for a large midlands-based housing association. Kathryn has a first-class honours degree in Business and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Kathryn has extensive experience in leading on improvement and culture change programmes including as lead for Investors in People and Barrett's Cultural Values model; and previously also led the customer experience and engagement functions. Outside work she was previously trustee for a community-based charity.
Mark joined the Housing Ombudsman Service as Head of Dispute Resolution in November 2022, after many successful years at the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO). Mark made a significant contribution to the Ombudsman sector through his pioneering work on peer reviews, supporting complaint handling schemes to make efficiencies and achieve excellence, and in chairing a cross-Ombudsman group on implementing, benchmarking and reporting against the Ombudsman Association's Service Standard Framework.
Mark brings experience of driving improvements in quality, proportionate and effective decision making, streamlining processes and leading high performing teams. Mark will lead our work on joint investigations with the LGSCO, which aims to extend fairness where complaints span both areas of jurisdiction.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
Maureen has worked in social housing for over 30 years. She started as a tenant and community activist in London, where she helped found several housing cooperatives and was active in many other housing and community projects, including the successful Coin Street campaign in London's South Bank where the local community successfully fought for ‘homes not offices'.
She went on to work professionally in housing, rising up the ranks from being a front-line housing officer to become Head of Housing in the Audit Commission for London where she ran the housing inspection regime. She has also worked as a housing consultant and coach, taught on the housing and community studies degree at Birkbeck College and served on several housing association boards. She is a Churchill Fellow who has published research on lessons the UK can learn from housing in Germany and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing. She currently works as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide.
Job Titles:
- Director of Finance and Corporate Services
Michael joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in July 2023 as the Director of Finance and Corporate Services. Michael is a Chartered Management Accountant with over 25 years' experience in private and public sector organisations. He previously worked for the Legal Ombudsman where he was a member of the Executive Team and led the Finance, Procurement and ICT services.
Prior to joining the Legal Ombudsman, Michael worked in local government supporting major corporate projects and acted as Lead Finance Officer for traded services where he encouraged a commercial focus to improve performance.
He has extensive experience of improving financial performance through the introduction of more rigorous reporting and analysis, and enjoys leading corporate teams in providing high quality support.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
Michael has worked in a wide variety of roles primarily within the public sector during the last 20 years. Having begun his career with environmental charities, Michael moved into policy roles within central, local and regional government. He worked in regional and national roles at the Homes and Communities Agency including as Assistant Chief Executive before returning to local government serving as an Executive Director at Chesterfield Borough Council for four years. After leading significant organisational change as Chief Executive of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, he is now undertaking strategic interim roles within local government.
Michael lives in Nottingham with his wife and two teenage children. He enjoys running, having recently taken on several ultramarathons, and plays drums as part of the band at his local church.
Job Titles:
- Head of Corporate and Information Governance
Michelle joined the Housing Ombudsman Service in July 2021 having worked 27 years in local government across a range of services, with her last role working as a Senior Manager for Complaints and Information Governance across a large borough council. Initially joining us as Governance and Assurance Manager, Michelle is now the Head of Corporate and Information Governance and operational Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO), leading the Digital and Data team, Performance and Business Information team, and Corporate Governance and Executive Support functions.
Rebecca joined the Housing Ombudsman Service as the Head of Insight and Development in November 2020. She comes from a complaints handling background. She worked in the police complaints field for over 15 years, starting off assessing complaints cases and managing a team of case handlers, before moving into leading the work to improve the police's own handling of complaints, which included conducting thematic investigations and intervention activity. She was responsible for the production of the annual police complaints statistics and in 2019, led a multifunctional team to design the data infrastructure for the new complaints system. She also led the team responsible for embedding the Statutory Guidance for the new complaints system with police complaints handlers.
Job Titles:
- Head
- Corporate Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing
Suzanne joined the Housing Ombudsman as Head of Dispute Support in October 2022. Her career in Housing has spanned over 20 years, with the last 15 of these working at a large housing association where she successfully centralised the housing management enquiries service. Prior to this she worked in specialist roles delivering Income, Estate Management and Anti-social behaviour services with a key focus on service improvement and operational policy development. She is passionate about the customer journey and delivering excellent services.
Suzanne is a Corporate Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and member of the Institute of Leadership and Management. Suzanne uses her skills, knowledge and experience to build effective high performing teams to deliver excellent services. Outside of work Suzanne volunteers in her local community, currently holding the position of Treasurer for a community-based charity.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
Tim is an Ombudsman Director at the Financial Ombudsman Service and brings over 13 years of dispute resolution experience together with operational leadership from a parallel ombudsman service. Prior to joining the Financial Ombudsman Service, he held a variety of senior management roles at Barclays, where he worked for 13 years.
Tim has also previously been a member of the Finance and Development Committee of Tower Hamlets Community Housing, where he gained valuable insight into the running of a registered housing provider. He served as a local councillor on Tower Hamlets council for eight years, leading on a number of housing issues and was lead member for overview and scrutiny. Tim was most recently a councillor on Reigate and Banstead Borough Council where he held the Executive Portfolio of Investments and Companies.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee
Job Titles:
- Head of HR
- Head of Human Resources
Tracey was appointed to the role of Head of Human Resources in July 2018. She has extensive generalist experience at an executive level and is CIPD qualified. Tracey has a background of working in the not for profit sector including housing and care. Tracey has 15 years' experience in human resources roles and has proven operational and strategic skills.
Verity Richards joined the Housing Ombudsman as the Head of Dispute Support in March 2021 after spending over 12 years working at a large, national housing association in various roles. She is a Member of the Chartered Management Institute and the Chartered Institute of Housing and uses her skills and experience to ensure that we intervene fairly where there is evidence of delays in complaint handling by member landlords.
Since joining the Housing Ombudsman, Verity has overseen the expansion of our Dispute Support teams, developed our Customer Charter, refined our approach to managing unacceptable behaviours and delivered operational changes to case handling following changes set out in the Building Safety Act. Verity is the operational lead for the interactive online portal, having been involved in its design, development and trial prior to roll out in 2023.
Her current focus is leading operational change in response to the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 20203 to ensure that landlords comply with the statutory Complaint Handing Code and that a strategic, intelligence-led approach is embedded in the Dispute Support function.