Industry News Present and former Housing Ombudsmen in the news
Boris Johnson’s former deputy mayor for housing in London, Richard Blakeway, has started work as the new Housing Ombudsman taking over from Andrea Keenoy, who had been in the role on a temporary basis. Mr Blakeway joins the ombudsman at the start of
its new three-year strategy, which aims to make “a difference on individual complaints and across the sector”. He said: “This is an exciting time to be joining the ombudsman service. I am keen to build on our work to strengthen our service and create a positive culture around redress.” The Housing Ombudsman Service looks at
complaints about housing organisations, addressing disputes involving the tenants and leaseholders of
social landlords and any private landlords who are signed up to the service. Last year’s Social Housing Green Paper suggested
the Government was looking at ways of making it easier for residents to access the ombudsman. However, expectations have fallen since Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May as Prime Minister.
FORMER OMBUDSMAN APPOINTED HA’S NEW CHAIR South-west based Aster housing group has appointed a former housing ombudsman Dr Mike Biles as its new chair. He took over as head of the board on 1 October, replacing Andrew Jackson.
Dr Biles was ombudsman for 13 years until 2014.
He has been a board member at Aster for four years and acted as senior independent director since last year, having previously chaired the group’s audit committee. Aster will appoint a new senior independent director later this month. Aster operates across the south of England where
it owns and manages 30,000 properties. It had a turnover of £212m for 2018/19 according to its recently published financial results. Shortly before assuming the chair’s role Dr Biles
said: “Aster has a clear vision of everyone having a home and a well-understood strategy that aims to increase the volume of high-quality, affordable houses across a range of tenures.”
Housing contractor Kier reveals £245m loss
Giant housing contractor Kier has announced a £245m annual loss after enduring “a difficult year” which saw its revenues fall and significant losses on a number of its contracts. The firm completes repairs and maintenance work for landlords across the social housing sector. Its losses for the year to 30 June 2019 compare with profits of £106m in the previous year. Overall its revenue fell three per cent to £4.12bn.
Although the company reported an “increased demand” for fire safety work in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it reported that its housing maintenance arm had been hit by councils taking work back in-house. Kier is selling its housebuilding arm and is also looking to offload its facilities management business and environmental services arms to concentrate on construction and civil engineering.
Chief executive Andrew Davies, said: “Kier experienced a difficult year, resulting in a disappointing financial performance. However, we are building firm foundations for the future: we have a new management team in place, we have defined our strategic priorities and we are taking decisive actions to deliver them.” Kier also announced that its chairman, Philip Cox, will step down once a replacement has been found.
-
-
-
24 | HMM October/November 2019 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
