Dawn Grocott
Leasehold Manager, Torus

Dawn has worked in Social Housing for 24 years and is experienced in all aspects of Leasehold Management, Shared Ownership and Service Charge administration. Currently working as Leasehold Manager for Torus 62 Ltd, Dawn also chairs the Affordable Home Ownership Group (North & Wales).

Peter Barker
Benefits Specialist, HB Anorak

Peter has worked in the benefits field for 40 years as an adviser, local authority HB officer and since 2006 as a freelance consultant, trainer and appeals specialist.  He is currently working with three supported housing providers involved in appeals against local authority decisions restricting their tenants’ benefit or refusing their HB claims altogether.  Delegates might be familiar with Peter from his frequent contributions to the Rightsnet discussion forum as HB Anorak, and from his weekly stint answering members’ queries for UC Notes / Housing Systems.

Jaclyn Burns
Finance Service Charge and Systems, Acis Group

Jaclyn has worked in finance for eight years. She currently works with Acis Group Limited as the Finance Service Charge and Systems Lead. She is responsible for Service Charge Budgets, Reconciliations and managing the Service Charge process for all properties currently within the group. Her role is integral in driving improvements and efficiencies for the Service Charge process. She works with a diverse property portfolio including Sheltered, Social, Shared Owners and Leaseholders. She also administers the financial system for Acis Group.

Howard Collins
Director Affinities and Association Development, PIB Insurance Brokers

Howard has over 30 years’ experience in commercial insurance, with one of the key areas being affinity and association groups. He has spent the last two years working with the NHF to understand the challenges the social housing sector faces and working with insurers to explain the sector, challenge the pre-conceived ideas and bring them on board to develop products and solutions to help the associations members.

Emma Comer
Consultant (Managing for Others),  Southern Housing

In a few months, Emma will have worked in housing for 20 years. Early on she started working in service charge teams and moved quickly into managing service charge teams initially in supported housing and then for social and leasehold tenures.  Emma has combined this experience with leading homeownership teams as well as service charges teams across all tenures.  Her work as a consultant allows her to use her experience to stabilise services, design effective operating models and ensure organisations are communicating effectively with tenants and leaseholders and providing assurance that landlords are managing services well.

Sam Coward
Partner, Trowers and Hamlins

Sam is a Partner in Trowers & Hamlins' Property Disputes team in Manchester.

Sam is a property litigator who acts for a variety of clients across the private, public, and social housing sectors on a broad range of property related disputes. In particular, Sam regularly advises on landlord and tenant disputes, including on recovering rent and service charge arrears and enforcing lease terms.

Sam is a well-known expert on housing law advising and has a detailed knowledge of the Regulatory Standards for housing associations and the wider regulatory framework within which they operate. He is also a leading expert in the residential leasehold management field, offering both contentious and non-contentious advice on a range of issues, including on leasehold enfranchisement and service charge recovery. He also has a growing practice in health and safety law, specifically relating to fire and gas safety.

Sam was a contributor to the Handbook of Co-operative and Community Benefit Society Law, published 2014 (Chapter 4 – Disputes). He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars hosted by the National Leaseholder Group and RICS. He is recommended in the Legal 500.

Lucy Dixon
Head of External Affairs, Karbon Homes

Lucy leads on public affairs and communications for the North East Housing Partnership. She has more than 20 years’ experience in communications and public affairs, and has worked across the voluntary and public sector including RNIB, the British Red Cross and Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service.

Kevin Dunleavy
Head of Leasehold Service, The Guinness Partnership

Kevin has 20 years of experience in establishing and leading successful leasehold management teams within the housing sector. This includes delivering services to a range of leasehold customers, including those through shared ownership, right-to-buy and open-market sale. He has also played a lead role in working across the sector to establish professional standards and service improvements. This includes being a founding member and current Chair of the National Leasehold Group and working alongside government to influence products and areas of law reform.

Sophie Gilligan
Head of Homeownership and Commercial Assets, Yorkshire Housing

Paula Goodacre
Finance Director - Homes Plus, Places for People

Paula has worked in the housing sector for almost 20 years. As the Finance Director for Homes Plus within the Places for People Group, she has responsibility for the financial performance of the regulated housing assets. With extensive experience in leasehold management and the administration of service charges more generally, she has represented PfP at tribunals to defend customer charges. Given the prevailing rates of inflation, she has particular concerns around the affordability of housing stock when service charges are increasing at a faster rate than rent and is keen to explore what we as a sector are doing to ensure that services demonstrate value for money.

Amanda Gourlay
Barrister, Lazarev Cleaver

Emma Hardman
Partner, Anthony Collins Solicitors

Emma leads the housing management team at Anthony Collins. She primarily advises housing association landlords on all housing management issues, including all aspects of service charges and rents, drafting and interpreting agreements, policies and procedures and legislative and regulatory obligations. She provides practical solutions to often complex scenarios and delivers client training. She co-authored the National Housing Federation's ‘Service Charges and Rent Charges: A guide for social housing landlords’ book.

Jane Harrison
Finance Director, Soho Housing

Jane has been Finance Director at Soho Housing for over four years. She has more than twenty-five years’ experience at senior executive and non-executive levels within both large and smaller housing providers and as assurance director and sector specialist at Grant Thornton LLP. Her most recent non-executive appointment is as board member and chair of the Audit and Risk Committee for Advance Housing and Support. Jane chairs the editorial board for the Housing Association Finance Guidance published jointly by CIPFA and the NHF. She is passionate about providing affordable, quality homes in places and communities where people want to live but can’t afford to on the open market; and is a regular contributor and speaker.

Kal Kay
Chief Financial Officer, Your Housing Group

Kal joined YHG in October 2023 having started out her career in the private sector. The last 20 years, however, have been spent working across the public and not-for-profit sector, holding senior finance roles in Local Government, Health, Charities, Housing, and Education. Responsible for ongoing financial sustainability and viability and identifying and implementing operational improvements and business development opportunities. All the while, embracing our culture of continuous improvement to support Value for Money throughout our organisation, Kal will be helping to shape the new strategy and enable the aspirations of the Group through finance and growth.

Christopher Last
In House Legal Counsel - Team Manager, A2Dominion

Jake Le Page
Head of Building Safety – Regulation, Notting Hill Genesis

Jake is the Head of Building Safety Regulation at NHG. His role is to ensure NHG is compliant with requirements of the BSA 2022 for occupied buildings, primarily through managing a team of Building Safety Managers and Safety Case Developers to produce safety cases. Associated with that, Jake has led an award winning programme focused on the golden thread and data culture at NHG. He has also recently completed the CIOB Level 6 Diploma in Building Safety Management.

Kim Long
External Affairs Manager, National Housing Federation

Kim has over 30 years of social housing experience and a broad knowledge of housing policy and new regulation. She currently works for the National Housing Federation as the External Affairs Manager for Yorkshire and Humber. Kim is also the programme lead on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Chair of two national EDI networks for CEOs and EDI professionals.

Ilyas Lunat
Independent Housing Specialist

Ilyas has worked at Senior Management level in social housing for over 20 years with a wealth of knowledge in all aspects of rents and service charges including compliance (both regulatory and legal), administration, collection and customer information.  He has a passion for making sure the customer is at the heart of everything.  Ilyas has managed service charges and front line teams dealing with service charges through difficult change and pressure periods and more recently oversaw Rent and Service Charges at Yorkshire Housing helping them on their journey to be 'customer obsessed' in all aspects of Rents and Service Charges. He has also led regional best practice groups on rents and service charges.

Laura Magezi
Policy Leader, National Housing Federation

Laura has led on resident engagement and services at the NHF since 2021. Previous to that, she worked at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (DEFRA), representing and promoting UK objectives at EU and international forums. She holds a degree in Business and Law from the University of Hertfordshire and possesses a dedication to addressing housing issues; driven by a strong desire to make a meaningful and positive impact on society.

Pascale Mézac
Consultant, Plan2moro

Pascale is the lead author of the NHF service charges guide to housing associations. She is an accountant, providing business planning services for social housing and charities. Her service charges expertise is vast and includes planning new developments, depooling charges from rents, financial modelling, agreements, communications, financial support and value for money. Trading as Plan2moro, Pascale combines the unique knowledge of housing, NHS, charities and social enterprises. The business aims are to provide business planning services whilst supporting organisational management and personal development of teams. Training delivered includes business planning, finance regulations, sheltered schemes remodelling, service charges, year end and budgets. Pascale works with you to bring a team together to deliver a specific project, making it happen with a strong commitment to excellence. She is innovative, wants to add value to your organisation and will meet deadlines with you whilst being inclusive.

Victoria Moffett
Head of Building Safety and Fire Programmes, National Housing Federation

Victoria leads the National Housing Federation’s building safety work, which focusses on supporting housing associations in their work to remediate buildings, shaping and preparing for the new regulatory system and developing long-term cultural change around safety. Victoria comes from a communications, policy and public affairs background, with experience in both housing and the charity sectors.

Rhys Moore
Executive Director of Public Impact, National Housing Federation

Rhys started with the NHF in October 2018, as Executive Director of Public Impact. Rhys oversees our policy, external affairs and communications work. Previously he was Director of the Living Wage Foundation where he worked with government, business and civil society to build a national movement of responsible employers. Before that, he helped to establish the London Community Foundation, which supports grassroots community groups in the capital. Rhys is a board member of the Carers Trust.

Pamela Newman
Chair, MTVH Customer Council, Customer Service Committee Resident member, G15 Residents’ Group member

Pamela has worked predominantly in the voluntary sector, working in senior roles within mental health, learning disabilities and community development. She currently works as Deputy Director of Operations for Evolve Housing + Support, which provides intensive support to homeless and marginalised people throughout London.
Pamela is also Chair of the Board of Trustees for a small mental health and employment support charity in south London. Pamela joined the MTVH Customer Services Committee in September 2020, to influence systemic change in the way that MTVH works to better the lives of tenants and residents.

Dr Aasia Nisar
Head of Resident and Community Engagement, Red Kite Community Housing

Aasia is an experienced housing professional with more than 25 years’ experience in the housing sector, but her real niche is resident involvement, community development, engagement as well as leading on transformation and governance projects. She is committed to ensuring residents’ voices are heard, making a real difference as to how services are delivered. Aasia has led on a number of successful reviews including co-creation modelling, scrutiny development, community engagement as well as housing regulatory reviews. Aasia, who has a PhD in Sociology and Social policy specialising in community engagement and sustainability, has also worked on several European Social Funded projects, as well as writing major funding applications for the National Lottery and other funding providers.

Liz Oliver
Safer Homes Director, The Hyde Group

Liz Oliver had led in compliance and safer homes roles within the housing sector for over ten years, working for organisations including Homes for Haringey and Optivo. Liz feels passionately about keeping both residents and buildings safe. She has headed up Hyde’s Safer Homes team for around 18 months, and under her leadership, Hyde has carried out major building safety work on 10 residential buildings and thousands of other smaller projects. She recently led on the successful recladding project affecting 433 homes in five tower blocks at Gosport. The project has not only won national awards, but Liz’s work at Gosport led to her becoming a ‘Building Safety Ambassador’ for Inside Housing. Thanks to Liz’s approach, always focusing on engaging with residents, and by being honest, open and supportive, Hyde has demonstrated to residents, stakeholders and government that it is a sector leader in building safety.

Jill O’Reilly
Legal Director, Winckworth Sherwood

Jill is a real estate property lawyer who has worked in the social housing sector for over 35 years and advises on a variety of property related matters for both for-profit and not-for-profit registered providers and private sector clients. Her work includes all aspects of raising private finance and obtaining maximum value for properties used as security, encouraging ways to streamline transactions, as well as advising on maintaining asset register data and using various technology systems to support this. Jill is also a member of the sector’s Property Finance Working Group which aims to improve value for registered providers in finance transactions.

Jo Paine
Director of Treasury Operations and Property Information, Southern Housing

Jo has worked in the housing association sector since 2007, solely with Southern Housing and its predecessor organisations. She is responsible for Treasury Operations, Insurance, Property Charging and Property Data in our Housing Management System.  Jo is an Associate Member of Corporate Treasurers (AMCT).

Her professional background was in investment banking where she worked on the trading floor and then in finance.

Emma Parker
Customer Income Manager, Accent Group

Emma has worked in Social Housing for 20 years and more specifically within Rents and Service Charges roles for 15 years. She is currently working as the Income Manager for Accent Housing Group dealing with all aspects of Rent and Service Charge Setting.

Andrea Payling
Director of Finance, Longhurst Group

Andrea has been with Longhurst Group for 26 years, starting as a Finance apprentice and progressing to Director of Finance. As part of her role, she successfully leads teams in Procurement, Business Partnering and Rents & Service Charges. Andrea’s experience in service charges has been integral to the development of service charge reviews, ensuring that the Group strives for full transparency with customers. Her wealth of knowledge in housing association operations is utilised in the business partnering functions, ensuring alignment between the wider business and Finance department in relation to how service charges are set within a diverse stock portfolio.

Vicky Pryce
Chief Economic Adviser, Centre for Economics and Business Research

Vicky Pryce is Chief Economic Adviser at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) and a Visiting Professor at BCU and King’s College, London. She was previously Director General for Economics at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Service.

Sue Ramsden
Policy Leader, National Housing Federation

Sue leads the Federation's policy work on housing management and supported housing.  She is a board member of Thamesreach Housing a small specialist homelessness provider in London.

Fay Shanahan
Corporate Director – Operations, whg

Fay joined whg’s group executive team in 2017 with 18 years’ housing management experience already under her belt. Fay has a diverse portfolio from housing to IT, customer service and community investment. She has championed innovative solutions to longstanding problems, not least rough sleeping and homelessness and tackling health inequalities in partnership with the health sector. Fay overseas whg’s Stronger Communities Directorate which supports and empowers our customers by focusing on health and wellbeing, employment, training and life skills. A key focus for whg is to work with partners to reduce health inequalities through timely interventions and tackling loneliness and isolation to build more resilient communities.

Adrian Shaw
Group Head of Homeowner & Leasehold Support, L&Q

Adrian joined L&Q in June 2021 as Head of Rent & Service Charge, where his responsibility covers rent and service charge administration and s20 consultation. He has worked for several housing associations as well as local authorities in London. He was previously Head of Service Charges at Clarion Housing Group and prior to that was Director of Commercial & Leasehold Services for Circle Housing Group. He is an Assoc RICS and MIRPM and is a Board member of the National Leasehold Group and chairs their service charge sub-group.

Kirsty Skinner
Leasehold and Service Charge Manager, Coastline Housing

Kirsty has worked in social housing, at Coastline Housing Ltd, for 16 years. Having started in the customer service team before moving into income management, she has specialised in leasehold and service charges since 2012. Kirsty haa a particular passion for IT systems and data accuracy and enjoys using her teaching qualification to train and empower colleagues.

Andrew Snee
Director of Tenancy and Housing Management, Curo

Kirsten Taylor
Senior Associate, Devonshires

Kirsten specialises in providing leasehold, shared ownership, and Building Safety advice for Registered Providers of Social Housing. She has a particular interest in lease variations within the tribunal, s.20 consultation, reasonableness claims and dispensation claims. She also acts for Registered Providers in relation to a wide range of disrepair claims and advise on enforcement action against superior landlords including breach of lease and injunctive relief proceedings. Kirsten has also represented private sector landlords and management companies.

Agnieszka Thakur
Finance Director, Financial Control and Operations, Peabody

Agnieszka Thakur Finance Director of Operations at Peabody and a Fellow of Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, with over 20 years in the social housing sector. Previously the Director of Financial Services at Catalyst Housing, she played a crucial role in successful merger activities involving Aldwyck Housing and Rosebery Housing. Passionately involved in technical matters, Agnieszka is a member of the Housing SORP Working Party.

Joanne Wright
Associate, Anthony Collins

Joanne specialises in advising housing sector clients regarding tenancy, leasehold, rent and service charge issues that affect their operations, as well as representing them in proceedings at the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). Joanne has a strong background in property-related/commercial disputes and has served on the board of management of a West Midlands-based housing association as a non-executive member for over four years. She has advised a number of clients on the ‘leasehold protections’ within the Building Safety Act 2022 as to how these can limit the recovery of service charges from leaseholders, and in relation to the statutory certification regime that applies to enable recovery.