National Housing Conference

Speakers: James McMorrow (Harper Macleod) Collette Miller (Harper Macleod), Derek Hogg (Harper Macleod), Michael Leslie (Chatham Financial), Anna Evans (Indigo House), Kelly Adams (RSM)

In this first session, the key partners from our Housing team discussed with leading professional advisers to the sector what they saw as the key challenges for Scottish housing providers. They covered governance and regulation, the current state of the private funding market and how RSLs could best embrace and overcome the multiple challenges they are facing.

More about our speakers

 Anna Evans | Indigo House
Anna is a specialist in housing policy, strategy and housing service review, redesign and change. She combines a portfolio of consultancy, research and interim executive management to achieve transformational change in housing organisations, and in local and national housing policy.

She has over 20 years experience working in the affordable housing sector across the UK. She has an applied economics and social research background, a postgraduate qualification in Housing Studies (University of Stirling) and MBA (University of Edinburgh). She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing, and Institute of Leadership and Management and is a mentor in the CIH Mentoring scheme. Anna has worked in local government, central government agencies and corporate consultancy, and has been a senior Board member in three housing associations. She led the affordable housing consultancy and research team at DTZ as Associate Director.

Anna has undertaken a large number of housing organisation and service reviews, staffing restructures, strategic alliance/mergers and strategic option appraisals. She was a project manager in two housing stock transfers in Scotland. She acts as an interim and special manager for housing associations and local authorities, including regulatory investigations. She has a particular interest in organisational culture and how that can help or hinder organisations in making efficient and effective change.

Kelly Adams | RSM
Kelly is a Chartered Accountant and Audit Partner with RSM UK and leads RSMs not for profit offering in Scotland, which encompasses social housing. With 24 years of experience with RSM, she has extensive experience over many years of auditing RSLs and their subsidiaries. She is a key member of the RSM’s national social housing strategy group and she also works closely with SFHA in providing support to their finance forums on technical accounting and taxation issues. Kelly is the Chair of the Board of West of Scotland Housing Association and a member of their Audit Committee.

Catch up on day one

Take a look at Derek Hogg’s conversation with Michael Leslie

Speakers: Euan Pirie (Harper Macleod), Martin Hensman (Hub South East Scotland) and Neil Wilson-Prior (Eildon Housing Group)

Scottish RSLs have been tasked with leading the charge on housing retrofitting, which plays an important role in achieving Scotland’s net zero carbon objective.

In this session, we reviewed the challenges and opportunities involved in creating a retrofit strategy for the social housing sector and discussed the route to delivering the wider net zero objectives for RSLs.

More about our speakers

Martin Hensman | Hub South East Scotland
With almost 30 years working in Development and Construction, the bulk of Martin’s experience is gained from delivering large, complex, public private housing led regeneration and Health and Education PPP projects. He currently leads on housing developments at Hub South East Scotland, one of five hub companies set up by Scottish Government to deliver a pipeline of community social infrastructure that now tops £5B completed, in construction or in development. In addition to developing innovative public sector new build housing, Martin  strongly advocates the adoption of a programmed approach to funding and delivering Scotland’s net zero ambitions through large scale housing retrofit. He has been a Board member of specialist affordable housing provider Blackwood Homes & Care since 2018.

Neil Wilson-Prior | Eildon Housing Group
Neil is an incomer to Scotland, having served the majority of his career in England. Neil has worked for social landlords (from the exceptionally large to the up-and-coming) in the form of ALMO’s, RSL’s and stock-retaining & developing Local Authorities. Neil is particularly experienced in refurb, having played a major role in delivering the ODPM’s “Decent Homes” programme for a variety of landlords, including Tower Hamlets £188m inward investment to their stock. He has also worked in strategic place-making, infrastructure and property compliance roles. Neil has also worked for private practices, including Mouchel Group, where he aided the UK’s second-largest landowner (Network Rail) in their strategic property appraisal programme.

Neil has a passion for social housing and innovation in the built environment. Neil is currently in post as Director of Property Assets for Eildon Housing Group. Eildon are very active in the decarbonisation space and are dedicated to providing clean, affordable warmth to all of their customers.

Speakers: Bruce Caldow (Harper Macleod) Helen Shaw (Scottish Housing Regulator)

This session covered the proposed review of the Annual Return on the Charter (ARC) report by the Scottish Housing Regulator and what this means for RSLs. We also discussed the current equality, diversity and inclusion challenges affecting the social housing sector, including how to deal with conflicting issues or concerns surrounding shared facilities.

Inclusive environments can help to reduce the challenges faced by housing associations in relation to discrimination faced by employees and residents.

More about our speaker

Helen Shaw | Scottish Housing Regulator
Helen is the Director of Regulation at the Scottish Housing Regulator, leading the Regulation Group which is responsible for monitoring, assessing and reporting on the performance social landlords and the financial health and governance of Registered Social Landlords.

Speakers: Calum Gee (Harper Macleod) Ashley Fleming (Harper Macleod) Keri Preece (Harper Macleod)

Human rights considerations can often present difficulties for social housing landlords when balancing the competing interests of landlord and tenant.

In this session, we explored the current challenges faced by the sector in complying with human rights legislation, including the relevance of the housing emergency and increased pressures because of migration policy changes. We also considered the possible impact of the Scottish Human Rights Bill on housing providers.