Homes and Homelessness

Alyson is the Partnerships Director for L&Q Housing Association and has worked in the Social Housing sector for over 19 years. As the voice of L&Q in the North West, Alyson’s focus is on working in partnership to understand the needs residents, community organisations, local and regional government and other stakeholders to help shape strategic plans and deliver on L&Q’s ambition for the North West, centred on levelling up investment and delivering quality new homes across the region. Passionate about the sector, tackling stigma, placemaking and the added value Housing Associations bring, Alyson brings a wealth of experience leading a wide cross section of teams, including Policy and Research, Information Communication Technology, Business Intelligence, Transformation and Diversity and Inclusion.

Modester Anucha is a successful senior manager with over 20 years leadership experience in public, private and voluntary sectors. She has a proven track record in performance improvement, business transformation, digital channel shifting, housing management, preventing and reducing homelessness, housing options. She currently holds the position of Director of Housing at London Borough of Hounslow, bringing experience from previous roles at London Borough of Waltham Forest.

David Ashmore is a passionate, experienced and successful leader in public services. Specialising in delivering large scale and long lasting positive change for communities and organisations across a wide range of front line and corporate services including housing, digital, finance, transformation, HR and many more. His current position as Director of Housing Services at Manchester City council, follows his previous roles at Coventry City Council, Lambeth Council and Harrow Council. David works in partnership with residents, colleagues, public and private sectors and always with honesty and integrity.

Darren became the Leader of Barking & Dagenham Council in 2014. Since then, he has established the borough as one of the most important growth opportunities in London and the Council has won numerous awards, including LGC Council of the Year for 2018 and the LGIU Leader of the Year Award. Since 2016, Darren has served on the London Councils Executive first as the Executive Member for City Development and now as the Executive Member for Housing and Planning. In his current role he has prioritised the delivery of truly affordable housing in the capital, fire safety, reducing homelessness and reducing the use of temporary accommodation. Under his leadership, the borough has undergone a programme of sustainable regeneration and has built over 2,000 council-built homes (the most in London), with the aim to build 50k homes starting at London living wage.

Robin is the Group Property Director at Network Rail. Network Rail Property is the commercial division of the organisation accountable for the management of all of Network Rail’s land and property assets. Network Rail Property generates over £200m each year, which is reinvested back into the railway to create a better railway for Britain. Across our six business units, we specialise in commercial lettings in our stations and arch portfolio, property and land development, property services, planning and mapping supporting the rail industry and workplace management responsible for the corporate office accommodation. Robin joins Network Rail from Hammerson Plc – the property development and investment company – and brings extensive experience in all property asset classes across UK and Europe. Robins focus in his role as Group Property Director is infrastructure growth and delivering developments across Great Britain with both the private sector and public partnerships, particularly in support of the Government’s levelling-up agenda around housing and investment

Danielle Gillespie currently holds the roles of Director of Regeneration at Homes England, Board Member of Stockport MDC. Director at Bristol TQ and English Cities Fund. Since joining HCA in January 2010, Danielle has undertaken a variety of roles including Head of Strategy, Programmes and Performance; Head of Area for Cheshire & Warrington. An economist by profession, with an MBA in Urban Regeneration, she has more than 15 years’ experience working in the sector. She started her career with one of the largest housing associations in the country, before moving into consultancy where she led the housing and economics team. This included a lead role on key commissions such as devising the North West Regional Housing Strategy. Danielle is the lead contact with partners across the North West, working to increase housing supply and unlock opportunities for growth.

Tom Renhard is a Labour and Co-operative councillor and the cabinet member with responsibility for housing delivery and homes in Bristol City Council. Tom’s background is as a housing campaigner and has been a member of ACORN since 2014, campaigning for better housing conditions for tenants. This has included being involved in high profile campaigns to bring in the eviction ban at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside an award-winning campaign that as part of the End Unfair Evictions Coalition secured a government commitment to bring an end to s21 no-fault evictions in the private rented sector. Tom is also a mental health campaigner, having setup the charity Independent Mental Health Network, which empowers people with lived experience of mental health problems to influence mental health support across the Bristol and Greater Manchester areas.

Jonathan Currently holds the position as Deputy Chief Executive at Regulator of Social Housing. RSH promotes a viable, efficient and well-governed social housing sector able to deliver and maintain homes of appropriate quality that meet a range of needs. Having previously been at Ernst and Young working in social housing consultancy, Jonathan has been at the Regulator since 2004. He has worked across the organisation and has extensive experience in dealing with funders, government and Registered Providers

Steve is the Deputy Leader of the Wolverhampton Labour Group / City of Wolverhampton Council. He is also Cabinet Member for City Housing. Steve has been a Fallings Park councillor since 2006 and has dealt with thousands of queries on behalf of residents and ran many campaigns (e.g. overdevelopment, road safety, flytipping etc). Since being elected in 2006 he has worked to bring about many improvements to the local area and campaigned hard to defend the services the residents deserve.

Jonathan Schifferes current role is Head of housing and Garden Communities for Essex County Council, his focus is to coordinate Essex County Council's role in securing better housing outcomes for current residents and future generations, bringing in experiences from his previous roles at Greater London Authority at both a housing Policy Manager and Area Manager.