Sophie Gilligan
Head of Homeownership and Commercial Assets, Yorkshire Housing

Sophie is Head of Homeownership and Commercial Assets at Yorkshire Housing, where she is focused on transforming the services delivered to homeowners in a housing associatoin setting. She has worked in the housing sector for 18 years and brings a wide range of experience in both tenant and leaseholder service charges.

Richard Blakeway
Housing Ombudsman

Richard was appointed as Housing Ombudsman from 1 September 2019. He has extensive experience in the housing sector, with previous roles including Deputy Mayor of London for Housing, chair of the Homes for London board, and a non-executive director of Homes England. During his eight years at the Greater London Authority, Richard was responsible for housing investment and land regeneration programmes. He also led the creation of the first team at City Hall to address rough sleeping, commissioning around £10 million of services each year, as well as the first Social Impact Bond on homelessness.

Richard is a former board member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and has been an election observer in Somaliland and the Ukraine.  He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and sits on the Administrative Justice Council. Richard is also a former chair of the Ombudsman Association and is a board member of the British Library.

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.

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.

Laura Coulter
Head of Rent and Service Charge, L&Q

Laura is currently Head of Rent and Service Charges for L&Q and has been working in Service Charges within housing with L&Q for over 10 years. Before that, she has had a career touching on all aspects of property within the private sector, working with both commercial and residential portfolios from property management, accounting to sales and lettings.

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.

Louise Dawson
Managing Director, Trace

Chris Forrester
Commercial and Sales Manager,, OneManchester

Becca Fury
Head of Homeownership, RHP

Sarah-Jane Gay
Head of Building and Fire Safety Programmes, National Housing Federation

George Grant
CEO, Housing Techology

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.

Abbie Harries
Head of Homeownership, LiveWest

Christopher Last
In House Legal Counsel - Team Manager, A2Dominion

Gabriel Olu’ Brown
Leasehold Services and Alterations Manager, London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Gabriel is a results-driven housing strategist with over 20 years’ experience in leasehold management, service improvement, and stakeholder engagement. He has a proven track record of transforming customer satisfaction, driving operational efficiencies, and embedding value for money across service delivery functions. Combining operational expertise with a deep understanding of policy, compliance, and the human factors that build trust, Gabriel brings a unique perspective to tackling complex housing challenges and draws on his extensive experience in exploring the root causes of resident dissatisfaction, practical approaches to resolving complaints and preventing maladministration.

Carla Platell
Head of Service Charge, LiveWest

Lee Reevell
Founder and CTO, Housing AI

Will Routh
Director and Co-Founder, Chirpy Heat

Will has worked in social housing heat networks for 17 years, including 10 years as Head of Sustainability at large social housing provider where he was responsible for direct management of heat network portfolio of over 4000 properties.

1n 2019, he co-founded Chirpy Heat to provide independent and impartial advice to housing providers to deliver great heat networks and fulfil their promises to be low cost, low carbon and easy to manage. Over the last years 6 they have advised over 100 housing providers with over 3,000 heat networks, representing more than 100,000 properties, helping clients with every type of management issue they have on heat networks ranging from compliance, cost, customers, contracts, capability and carbon.

His wider work in the sector includes co-founding The Heat Network, a best practice sharing and lobbying group heat networks in social housing, co-creating The Heat Exchanger mentoring programme to help improve skills, professionalism and learning in the developing heat network sector and was advisory group member for DESNZ’s Heat Network Efficiency Scheme (HNES) programme.

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.

Rob Thompson
Strategic Lead Rent & Income Services, Thirteen Group

Deborah Toner
Policy Researcher, Citizens Advice

Deborah Toner is a Senior Policy Researcher in the Energy team at Citizens Advice. She works on heat networks, especially in relation to the new regulatory framework and consumer experiences of debt and affordability.