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.
Elizabeth Austerberry
Chair - Octopus Affordable Homes, Octopus Real Estate
Elizabeth has joined as Chair of the Board of the Registered
Provider at the heart of the Affordable Housing Strategy
at Octopus Real Estate.
Elizabeth retired as the CEO of Moat Housing, a major
Housing Association covering London and the South East.
Elizabeth was previously a Board Member of the National
Housing Federation from 2015 to 2020 and has held
multiple previous senior roles across real estate banking
and finance.
Elizabeth has an MA from the University of Oxford in
History.
Jennifer Murray
Head of Institutional Investment, Homes England
Catherine Raynsford
Director, The Hyde Group
As Director of Investment and Partnerships for the Hyde Group, Catherine is responsible for securing the investment and delivering the new partnership models that enable Hyde to grow its development pipeline. Since joining Hyde in 2020 she has led a team to identify, develop and enhance long-term relationships with a broad range of partners including institutional investors. The strategy aims to delivery meaningful additionality by working with culturally aligned partners and utilising Hyde’s established delivery and operational platforms to provide more high quality, sustainable affordable homes.
Prior to joining Hyde she spent 9 years at JLL, specialising in public private partnerships, and working with public sector landowners to bring forward major development and regeneration projects.
Catherine is a member of the BPF’s Affordable Housing Committee, the IPF Residential Special Interest Group, and was part of the Governance Steering Group that helped establish the Sustainability Reporting Standard.
Adam Brannen
Head of Regeneration, Leeds City Council
Adam is responsible for major spatial programmes and place partnership activities across the whole Leeds district, leading a multi-disciplinary team planning and delivering renewal and growth including the East Leeds Extension, South Bank, the Aire Valley Leeds Enterprise Zone, green infrastructure, wider housing growth activities, neighbourhood regeneration and heritage-lead renewal schemes.
As a chartered town planner and with 20 years working in regeneration, Adam has a strong track record in securing funding, working with communities and with the development industry to deliver place and development initiatives at all scales.
Adam also draws on wide-ranging experience of community and partner consultation and engagement in his work on Towns Fund, Levelling Up Fund, high street renewal and housing development.
Munawer Shafi
Head of Structured & Private Debt - Real Assets, Aviva Investors
Munawer is responsible for origination, structuring and execution of Private and Structured debt at Aviva Investors, key focus areas include direct lending to corporate and sub-sovereign sectors and investment in structured and bespoke asset classes including insured and guaranteed loans, swap repacks, liquidity derivatives, fund financing, trade finance and securitisations. The investment strategies are assessed in relative value context and results in enhanced risk adjusted returns in comparison to liquid vanilla investment strategies.
Prior to joining Aviva Investors, Munawer was an Actuarial Associate at Willis Towers Watson where he was responsible for all aspects of actuarial and investment advice to occupational pension funds. He previously worked for Barclays Capital as a Structured Credit Products Analyst, and before this worked as a Pricing Analyst at AXA.
Munawer holds a Bachelor’s in Actuarial Science from Cass Business School, a Master’s in Actuarial Finance from Imperial College London and is a qualified Actuary. Munawer also holds the Certificate in Derivatives from the Institute of Actuaries and the IMC from the CFA Society of the UK. He is a member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
Cllr Shama Tatler
Cabinet Member for Regeneration & Planning, London Borough of Brent
Shama Tatler has been a Councillor for the London Borough of Brent since 2014 and a member of the Cabinet in 2016 with responsibility for Regeneration, Property and Planning, overseeing some of London’s largest regeneration schemes. As part of her role she oversees some of the largest regeneration projects in London, including the Wembley Park area and also leads on the multi-award winning estate regeneration scheme in South Kilburn. She drives economic growth in Brent, as well as leading on innovative strategies on inclusive growth and affordable workspace. Recently, Shama has led on the adoption of Brent’s Local Plan and subsequent masterplan SPDs for the Neasden Station Growth Area and Church End.
Shama is currently a member the Local Government Association’s Resources Board .
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.
Scott Black
COO, Places for People
I am a chartered architect with 30 years’ experience in the development industry and a passion for design and the creation of sustainable new communities. I performed several roles in my career leading up to Managing Director of Crest Nicholson Regeneration, and was responsible for the group’s major mixed-use regeneration projects, partnership schemes and commercial portfolios.
Having joined the board of Places for People in May 2020, I started with the responsibility for the organisation’s growth agenda, supplying all new properties that Places for People owns and manages in the future. In August 2022, my role expanded to include PfP Capital and the company’s Affordable Housing business and I became Chief Operating Officer.
The Developments team aims to deliver around 2,000 multi-tenure affordable homes per year across six regional businesses, from Scotland to Cornwall and everything in between. The Affordable Housing business managers 96,000 homes that we own across 4 regional businesses and PfP Capital has 500.3m under management in the private rental sector.
I am also responsible for the Homes England strategic partnership, which will see around 6,000 homes delivered in the next 10 years.
Places for People’s multi-tenure approach provides affordable homes for everyone, including social rent, affordable rent, outright sales, Shared Ownership, PRS, and retirement living for all income ranges.
Places for People owns or manages more than 230,000 homes, operate over 100 leisure facilities, has assets of £5.1 billion, and will deliver circa 6,000 affordable homes over the next 10 years through its partnership with Homes England.
Places for People is a leading affordable homes-led placemaker. We create and manage thriving communities that our customers are proud to call home and are sustainable - economically, socially and environmentally.
We aim to create social impact and make a difference through all our work for our customers and our communities across the UK.
Our long-term ambition is to change the way places are designed, built and managed to create housing choices that improve people’s lives, delivering a positive impact on our communities.
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.
Elizabeth Froude
Chief Executive, Platform Housing Group
Elizabeth is the Chief Executive of one of the largest Social Landlords in the Midlands, Platform Housing Group.
They manage 48,000 homes across the Midlands and build c1,800 new homes each year, regularly delivering the largest number of new social and affordable homes in the sector.
Their strategy is about building a “Truly Modern Housing Association, driving hard to maintain the efficiency in their business and maximising the use of technology, as well as being brave in their approach to new ideas.
Before joining the Housing Sector, in 2005, Elizabeth spent 20 years in a variety of commercial sectors, from Film to retail and service sector within large FTSE and multi- national organisations.
Her roles there were mostly in change, process improvement and merger .
In her spare time Elizabeth is a NED and Chair of Audit and Risk Committee for another landlord in Hertfordshire.
She also acts as a Board member / Chair for a number of networks and Government think tanks, including The Future Homes Hub, The Sustainability Strategy Group for the National Housing Federation and the Affordable Housing Network for Winmark, which bring multi sector skills and insights to the Housing Sector.
Ricardo Moreira
Managing Director, XCO2
Ricardo is co-founder and managing director of XCO2. He is responsible for the company’s overall management and strategic business development, and also leads some of its key decarbonisation projects.
With both architectural and engineering backgrounds, and over 20 years of experience in the industry, he is a firm believer in collaboration between disciplines and design integration as major enablers for delivering robust sustainability solutions.
Ricardo holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Design and Engineering from University College London, where he received Commendation for his innovative research. He has also lectured at University College London, Imperial College and Central St Martins College, and numerous international conferences in Europe, Asia, North and South America.
Sarah Forster
Chief Executive, The Good Economy
Sarah Forster is CEO and Co-Founder of The Good Economy (TGE), a leading, independent impact advisory firm. TGE’s purpose is to enhance the contribution of business and finance to sustainable development by helping organisations consider, measure and manage their impact – and report it effectively.
Sarah has led the growth of TGE’s services for private investors in social and affordable housing with a focus on promoting transparency and accountability for delivering genuinely affordable, quality homes for all. TGE also led the development of the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing (SRS), a ground-breaking sector standard ESG reporting framework designed to enable transparent, consistent and comparable reporting. She also co-authored the report “Scaling Up Institutional Investment for Place-based Impact” making the financial and social case for more institutional investment to be invested in levelling-up the UK.
Sarah has over 30 years experience in sustainable development, impact investing and impact measurement. Prior to establishing TGE, she was Deputy CEO of Big Issue Invest and held senior positions at the New Economics Foundation and the World Bank.
Will Perry
Director of Strategy, Regulator of Social Housing
Will is Director of Strategy at the Regulator of Social Housing, where he is responsible for developing corporate strategy, business intelligence and regulatory policy. He is also responsible for the Regulator’s relationships with the funding markets and the regulation of for-profit providers. Will is a qualified chartered accountant, and has previously worked in social housing consultancy, corporate finance lead advisory for a top 10 firm and government audit.
Kate Ives
Strategic Growth Director, Countryside