Ian Harries

BSc, CIH

Ian studied at Sheffield Hallam University, (previously known as Sheffield Polytechnic) where he qualified with a Higher Technical Diploma in Land Use Studies, specialising in Land Administration and Valuations; and an Honours Degree in Housing Studies.

Ian has worked for a variety of Local Authorities and Housing Associations in various positions from housing management trainee to Chief Housing Officer and Director level in a Housing & Social Services department.

He has also worked as a retained advisor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on housing policy and practice, an Associate Inspector of the Audit Commission and an Affiliate of HouseMark, the industry's benchmarking and performance improvement organisation.

He is a Corporate Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing.

Gary Hortop

BA (Hons), MCIH

TBC

Dr Debbie Hay

BA, Phd, MCIH

Debbie has a PhD in 'Resident involvement in the organisational structure of housing associations in England' and has served for over ten years on Group Boards of some of the UKs largest housing associations.

Debbie has extensive experience assessing and reviewing services for organisations and supporting them to improve.

She has served on national advisory groups on issues relating to governance and customer involvement and used her experience working for the Housing Inspectorate and resident involvement to develop a number of successful resident inspector teams across the country and a range of tools to support them.

This work has naturally developed into scrutiny activities. She is noted for her work in fixing and sorting scrutiny that is not working and helping organisations to make the structural changes necessary to factilitate effective scrutiny and wider involvement that makes a difference.

Other areas of work include change management, governance support, gap analysis, coaching, policy/strategy development with a focus on supporting staff and residents to be business critical.

Debbie is an experienced trainer facilitation and conference speaker and a a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing.

Jenny Vernon

Jenny is uniquely placed in housing consultancy – having experienced the sector as a resident, employee, senior manager and board member! Her innate understanding of the impact decisions have on all these stakeholders contributes to the holistic view that Jenny brings to all her projects.

Jenny has had over 30 years’ experience in the social housing sector, starting out as a community activist and ending up as Director of Good Governance Network. She specialises in supporting organisations going through change or challenging times, enabling all concerned to have a voice, contribute to final decision making and achieve sustainable outcomes.

In her consultancy work, she combines strong interpersonal and communication skills with excellent project management and customer focus, making her a popular choice to support organisations going through challenging/changing times.

Personally committed to continuous improvement, she encourages her clients to undertake their journey at a pace that supports stable, continued and measureable success. As each client comes with its own unique set of circumstances, all project work is shaped to that organisation’s needs. Jenny invests in getting to know and understand each client and the outcomes they require at the outset of each project. This ethos allows projects to flex to meet organisational need and Jenny is quite happy to contribute towards this development.

Completing a BA(Hons) in 1988, Jenny has a post-graduate Diploma in Housing from University of the West of England, along with other post-graduate certificates in Business Performance Coaching and Business Psychology. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and Chair of United Housing Association (the largest BME specialist housing organisation in the south west).

Ian McDougall

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Ian has carried out consultancy, scrutiny, facilitation and development/training work for a wide range of organisations in the social housing sector. In addition to this he specialises in Leadership, Team working, Customer service and the development of scrutiny groups.

Ian has been involved in housing for the last seven years, developing and teaching governance, Scrutiny, performance management, and inspection as well as interim management positions.

He was previously Chairman of Westcountry housing, where he assisted with the transfer of Tarka Housing, working with residents of the shadow Board over a number of years.

Educated at Keele, then as a post graduate of Oxford University, he worked for 25 years in consultancy and the finance industry. As a senior manger he was responsible for the organisational and leadership development of Managers in Europe, ranging from MBA recruits to Senior Vice Presidents.