Helia Ebrahimi
Economics Correspondent, Channel 4 News

Channel 4 News' Economics Correspondent Helia Ebrahimi reports on the big changes in the economy and the public finances and how they'll influence the world you live in.

Jacque Allen
Chief Executive Officer, Your Housing Group

Matthias Barker
Policy Leader, National Housing Federation

Matthias is the Policy Leader for finance at the National Housing Federation, having joined in 2024. His brief covers rent policy, the financial sustainability of the sector, and new investment models in affordable housing, as well as a range of other finance policy issues including coordinating the housing SORP. He previously worked in L&Q's strategic research team, where he led on policy development and research on behalf of both L&Q, and the G15, whilst L&Q were in the chair.

Andrew Berry
Head of Portfolio Management, Orbit

Barrington Billings
Chair, BME National

Barrington began his senior housing career in 1990 and for six years was Executive Director at Hallmark Community Housing in Derby. Since then, he has held senior Executive-level posts at a number of housing associations, including six years as Area Director (Midlands) Places for People Group, two years Stock Transfer Adviser for the Housing Corporation and two years as Executive Director for Hamac Housing (Prime Focus Group) Birmingham. In 2004 he set up his own property services company Glendon Group in Birmingham providing a range of planned major works contracts to the housing sector including a national contract with the MOD across 16 sites UK wide. Barrington is currently Head of Asset Management and Development at Tuntum Housing Association in Nottingham. In addition to executive roles, he has also served on a number of boards; outside of the housing sector he has served as a non-executive board member at the Academy for Sustainable Communities and seven years for an NHS Trust, and was Chair of the Joint Awarding Body of the CIOB & CIH 2007 - 2008. He was an external examiner at De Montfort University and a visiting speaker at Warwick Business School and Birmingham City University. Within the sector he has served on the Boards of Gentoo Group in Sunderland (2008 - 2017) chaired Arhag Housing in London (2007 - 2013), and was also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing Governing board from 2000 - 2008, serving as President from 2005 - 2006. He is currently Chair of Manningham Housing Association in Bradford since 2017.

Tina Black
Senior Rent and Service Charge Accountant, The Guinness Partnership

Tina has been with The Guinness Partnership for over four years and brings more than two decades of financial experience from a range of commercial sectors. In her current role, Tina specialises in income optimisation and transformation, as well as budgetary control and cost management. Her expertise is further enhanced by her experience as a business partner to both Asset Management and Operations and Improvements. Tina is passionate about delivering value for money to residents, placing a strong emphasis on operational efficiencies through process redesign and the implementation of effective controls.

Reuben Christian
Edutainer and Coach

Anne Costain
Chief Financial Officer, Stonewater

Anne is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Corporate Treasurer. She has worked in housing for over 10 years at a senior level. Before working in housing, Anne worked in manufacturing for a number of organisations, from SME to Fortune 500 and FTSE 250 – latterly as Finance Director for De la Rue in its Currency and Supply Chain division.

Ilona Cristea
Assistant Finance Director – Property Services and Commercial, Peabody

Ilona is an experienced finance professional specialising in the housing sector. With over two decades of experience, she is an FCCA-qualified accountant skilled in business partnering, group accounting, budgeting, and financial reporting. Before joining Peabody in 2022, Ilona was Head of Group Accounting at Catalyst, where she oversaw financial operations. In addition to her professional achievements, she is a Board Member of Greenhill Housing Association, an innovative and growing organisation providing housing in London and the South East.

Caroline Dakin
Resilience Coach

Caroline is our Head of Learning & Development and the founder and owner of Caroline Dakin Associates. Her thought-provoking training programmes help businesses across the globe to build high-performing teams. Her unique and interactive delivery style encourages participants to question their leadership qualities and challenges them to, not only reach but surpass their potential. Backed up by neuroscience and supplemented with practical tools, techniques and resources, her training inspires action and change for a better, more resilient workplace. Caroline is also an accomplished speaker and can be found sharing her unique take on resilience at corporate leadership events, national awareness days, industry conferences, and educational seminars.

Michael Dent
Director of Business Change, Bernicia Group

Michael is the Director of Business Change at Bernicia Group and has held this position since May 2025. He originally joined Bernicia in April 2023 as Project Director to oversee it's Salesforce platform implementation. He has extensive experience in project and change management, having previously worked in the water and energy utility industries. He is now leading Bernicia on the implementation of their Business Improvement Strategy, designing an enduring framework and establishing an expert team to support the group to manage its change portfolio.

George Flynn
Director, Savills Financial Consultants

George is a Director within Savills Financial Consultants (“SFC”). SFC is part of the Affordable Housing Division within Savills PLC, a listed company on the FTSE 250, and is retained advisor to over 60 Housing Association customers and acts for a further 20 clients on an ad-hoc basis. George joined SFC in November 2022 and since joining has supported numerous clients in strategic treasury exercises across multiple financing markets. George has extensive experience supporting capital raising across the banking and capital markets (UK and North American Institutional Investors). Prior to joining SFC, George spent a decade at NatWest in a variety of different roles supporting clients access the public and private capital markets and conducting strategic risk management transactions. George has experience across multiple sectors including Housing Associations, Universities, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Corporate and Charitable issuers.

Francis Gater
Director - Affordable Housing - Value and Risk Advisory, JLL

Rob Griffiths
Deputy Chief Executive, Amplius

Having joined the organisation in 1994, Rob was the Chief Financial Officer since 2006 and became Deputy Chief Executive in 2015. Rob has led and been involved in a number of key growth projects, with extensive experience in developing a business plan that's now delivering around 700 new homes each year across a range of different tenures. Elsewhere, Rob is the Chair of the Housing Statement of Recommended Practice Working Party (SORP) and in 2016 was appointed as a member of the Financial Reporting Council's Technical Advisory Group. More recently, in February 2018, Rob was appointed as an employer representative to the Social Housing Pension Scheme (SHPS).

Gary Grigor
Partner, Devonshires

Gary is a Partner in the Banking team and co-heads the wider Leeds office alongside Chris Drabble. He acts for borrowers, lenders and trustees on real-estate finance related arrangements, with a renowned specialism in social housing finance. He has extensive experience of advising on a range of financial instruments and arrangements, including syndicated and bilateral loan facilities; facility restructurings; mergers; group collapses; intra-group funding; interest rate derivatives; private shelf facilities, and high-value private bond issues.

Mike Grimditch
Director of Financial Strategy, Greensquare Accord

Judy Hardy
Chief Risk Officer, Places for People

Kate Henderson
Chief Executive, National Housing Federation

Kate is Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF), the voice of housing associations in England. Kate is passionate about tackling the housing crisis, inequality and climate change. She is a member of several government panels including the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel and the Social Housing White Paper Expert Challenge Panel. Kate become a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2021. Prior to joining the NHF in 2018, Kate was Chief Executive of the Town and Country Planning Association.

Keely Henderson
Head of Treasury – Property, Riverside

Yasmin Holley
Chief Finance Director, Amplius

Yasmin is Director of Finance at Amplius, the single organisation created following the merger of Longhurst Group and Grand Union Housing Group in December 2024. Yasmin started her career with PwC, qualifying as an accountant and completing a degree in accounting whilst progressing within PwC’s external audit practice. She continued to work in professional services before moving into the housing sector five years ago. Alongside her role at Amplius, Yasmin sits on the Audit and Risk Committee of Hundred Houses Society, the ICAEW Social Housing Sub-Committee and the SORP Working Party. Yasmin is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and has recently completed an MBA.

Alex Ingram
Assistant Director, Guarantees Programmes, Homes England

Alex Ingram is responsible for the delivery and management of over £12 billion of housing guarantees on behalf of the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Alex joined Homes England in 2018. Prior to this, her 18 year career in NatWest included a broad range of banking and risk roles, including corporate and commercial real estate.

Shakie Kawuyu
Director, Data and Analytics, RSM UK

Janette Longstaff
Chief Finance Officer, Bernicia Group

Janette has held her current position since 2019, and has been with Bernicia for over 18 years. She is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Accountants and has responsibility for Finance, ICT, Risk and Assurance across the Group. Janette is the Chair of the NHF North East Finance Practitioners Group

Fiona MacGregor
Chief Executive, Regulator of Social Housing

Fiona became Chief Executive of the standalone Regulator of Social Housing in October 2018 having been Director of Regulation at the Homes and Communities Agency from November 2015. The Regulator is responsible for the regulation of registered social housing providers. Previously, as Director of Programmes, she was responsible for HCA’s Affordable Housing and Help to Buy programmes. Fiona has over 25 years housing experience, covering development investment, programme delivery and policy development. She has worked at the HCA since it launched in 2008, before which she was Deputy Director of Investment at the Housing Corporation, and prior to that, Head of Development at London & Quadrant.

Nathan Mallows
Director of Finance, People and Change, Coastline Housing

Nathan is the Director of Finance and ICT at Coastline Housing in Cornwall since January 2016. Prior to that, he worked as a consultant for 4 years supporting various charities, start-ups and Housing providers. Nathan has worked in and around housing for nearly 20 years and been fortunate to be involved with amazing organisations of all shapes and sizes supporting communities and delivering much need new homes predominately across London and the surrounding counties. Nathan is also the current chair of the National Housing Federation’s Finance Policy Advisory Group which exists to inform and respond to the NHF’s wider policy agenda with particular reference to financial implications for its members.

Rachel McGoff
Head of Financial Accounting and Reporting, The Guinness Partnership

Paul McGrady
Chief Financial Officer, Magenta Living

Paul is the CFO of Magenta Living based in Birkenhead. Unusually he spent 2 years on the board there before ‘crossing the table’ to become a member of the exec team, which gives him a unique insight into the workings of the company. Prior to Magenta he spent 10 years working for housing associations and has a previous background in local government becoming the Finance Director at a unitary county council where he was also head of housing and property. At Magenta he has taken the lead on all things AI and has recently completed an AI Mastery course with Wirral AI Academy.

Helen Meehan
Chief Financial Officer,, Home Group

Helen became Home Group’s Chief Financial Officer in 2022, having previously been Director of Finance. She joined Home Group in 2015 as Director of Risk and Assurance, moving to Director of Finance in 2018. Before arriving at Home Group Helen was with PwC, where she oversaw the delivery of high-quality, value-added risk and assurance work internal and external clients.

Prof David Miles CBE
Member, Budget Responsibility Committee, OBR and Professor of Financial Economics, Imperial College, London

David Miles is Professor of Financial Economics at Imperial College, London. He has had previous academic positions at Birkbeck College, London and at Oxford University. He has undergraduate and masters degrees from Oxford University and a PhD from the University of London.
He is a member of the Budget Responsibility Committee of the Office for Budget Responsibility, where he takes the lead on economic analysis. He is a member of the Commission of the Central Bank of Ireland. He was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England between May 2009 and September 2015. As an economist he has focused on the interaction between financial markets and the wider economy. He was Chief UK Economist at Morgan Stanley from October 2004 to May 2009. In 2004 he led a government review of the UK mortgage market. In 2018 he completed a review for the UK Treasury on reference prices of UK government bonds. He has been an advisor to the IMF and to the reserve Bank of New Zealand. He is a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and at the CESIFO research institute in Munich.

Yvonne Moore
Head of Resilience Solutions, Zurich

Yvonne has been in the Insurance Industry for nearly 30 years and with Zurich for over 25 of these, working in a number of Underwriting roles which include London Market, Technical Line of Business, Operational Management and People Leadership. Yvonne has a wealth of experience in Public Sector Insurance having spent much of her career in Zurich Municipal with responsibility across all Lines Of Business and Sectors. Yvonne has been in her current role as ZM's Head of Underwriting for six years with accountability for Underwriting Strategy, Performance and Portfolio Management across all ZM's markets.

David Olusoga
Historian, Writer, Presenter

Maria Organ
Executive Director of Finance, West Kent Housing Association

Maria has over 15 years’ experience working in several senior finance roles across housing and the wider public sector, including local government, regeneration, and health. She is responsible for business planning, treasury and financial management, rents & service charges, procurement, risk management, governance, communications and human resources. Maria has held senior roles including Deputy Director of Finance for Raven Housing Trust and has been a trustee of several charities, most recently Croydon Plus Credit Union. Maria is a qualified accountant and member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

Yogeta Partridge
Independent Consultant

Yogeta has been in the housing sector for almost two decades. She is a solicitor by trade, who started working with the sector whilst at a main sector law firm – acting on behalf of housing associations and lenders using properties to secure against debt. She then had an opportunity to do a 6 month secondment at L&Q – which turned into a 13 year career. Whilst at L&Q, Yogeta created and embedded a robustly governed thread that flowed through the lifecycle of the homes from land to development through to treasury to optimise future financial opportunities – including the granular detail on legal ownership for L&Q’s entities. For the wider sector, Yogeta created and led two working groups to encourage greater collaboration and open forums to discuss and overcome obstacles, identify solutions and share best practices. These two working groups, ‘Legal Treasury Group’ for housing associations and the connected group ‘Property Finance Working Group’ with law firms and valuers, continue to strongly benefit the sector. Yogeta’s passion to use her expertise and skillset to help more housing associations and benefit the wider sector led her to create her own consultancy, Rydeo Consulting, in 2023. Through Rydeo, Yogeta is currently working with housing associations as a consultant to Executive teams, carrying out independent reviews of existing processes and procedures to identify and embed efficiencies, and using her expertise as a resource to project manage transactions whilst creating and embedding proactive strategies to reduce the ‘reactive nature’ of these transactions. Yogeta is also providing her expertise, through Rydeo, to other organisations to identify wider sector solutions to some of the many challenges.

Richard Petty
Head of Residential Valuation, JLL

Richard Petty is a Chartered Surveyor and Head of UK Residential Valuation at JLL, with responsibility for the firm’s Residential Valuation teams across the country, including Affordable Housing. The JLL teams cover the full range of residential property, including prime and ‘super prime’ homes, PRS, build to rent (both multi and single family), development schemes and investment portfolios of every scale. Richard has 38 years’ professional experience, with the last 29 years principally focused on affordable housing. Outside JLL, he is a Board member at Watford Community Housing Trust, Chair of Clarendon Living Limited, and a Board member of The Riverside Group. He has also held NED roles at Richmond Housing Partnership, Anchor Hanover Group and Dolphin Living Limited.

Mike Roche
Director, Housing Treasury, Savills Financial Consultants

Mike Roche joined the company in 2011 and is a director of Savills Financial Consultants, the treasury and funding advisory team within the housing division of Savills. With more than 25 years of experience in advising clients in the housing association field, Mike's knowledge and expertise is well-known in the industry. He works with the team to give create innovative funding solutions for both lenders and investors.

Matthew Rose
Director of Treasury, Bromford Flagship

Matthew joined Bromford in 2024 to lead Treasury. He has led a number of bank, private placement and bond financings and a new EMTN programme and SFF. He has refreshed the team and been heavily involved in planning actions for the mergers with Flagship and LiveWest. Matthew is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Corporate Treasurer, and led Treasury and Tax teams at Royal Mail, De La Rue, Taylor Wimpey and BT. His career has included many high profile transactions including the debut bank syndicate, public bond and credit rating for Royal Mail post IPO, and the subsequent award by the ACT of Treasury Team of the Year in 2015.

Helen Rourke
Chief Financial Officer, St Mungo’s

Helen joined St Mungo’s in 2024 where leads the Finance, IT and Governance and Compliance functions. Helen is a chartered accountant who spent most of her career to date working in the social housing sector, holding a number of senior, executive and non-executive roles. Helen is also a member of the Audit Committee of a large housing association in the North West of England, and volunteers as a co-ordinator at a Street Kitchen supporting homeless and vulnerable people in Manchester.

Sayheng Sam
Director of Finance – Monitoring and Reporting, L&Q

Paul Sandersfield
Director of ICT, Bernicia Group

Initially starting an audit and finance career, Paul moved into IT and has worked in a variety of IT roles in the public sector for 34 years and within social housing specifically for over 23 of them. His experience includes many major IT related projects, information security and cyber, IT related standards and best practice, and has a passion for data management and governance. He has worked at Bernicia since September 2023 and leads the IT function.

Natalie Singh
Partner, Trowers and Hamlins

Natalie is a nationally recognised affordable housing finance lawyer and an acknowledged market leader. Natalie has extensive experience in advising housing providers on all aspects of their funding needs including syndicated and bi-lateral borrowing, capital market issues, ESG, green and sustainability-linked finance, intra group lending, hedging arrangements and security portfolio matters. Natalie also provides strategic advice in relation to large scale restructurings, funding and treasury matters connected with mergers, treasury vehicle structures and group reorganisations. Natalie also sits as a Non Executive Director on the Board of Habitare Homes, a for profit registered provider established by MAN Group plc.

Tanya Srikandan
Board Member, Women in Social Housing

Tanya has been in the housing sector for over 10 years, following a career in banking. Her entrance into the sector was with an organisation which worked closely with local authority partners to provide affordable and good quality emergency and temporary accommodation for homeless families and vulnerable individuals. Since then she has held a number of board positions, within housing and support charities (including mental health and learning disabilities), housing associations and housing services providers. Although a chartered accountant by qualification, Tanya's remit in previous roles has been expansive. Including finance, she has been responsible for asset and property management, central and corporate services, business planning and project management. As a Green Belt, and 6 Sigma trained, Tanya is very keen to introduce change management efficiencies into organisations, with top priorities being customer service and value for money. She has led a number of business turnarounds, taking into account the need to provide an affordable but quality and compliant service. Tanya is also passionate about ensuring fair treatment and equality to everyone regardless of status. including promoting social inclusion and community value. She is an active member of the Women in Social Housing network and enjoys taking part in debates and talks around equality and diversity. Currently, Tanya is the Head of Commercial at Mears Housing Management, part of the Mears Group Plc. Tanya is also passionate about ensuring fair treatment and equality to everyone regardless of status - including promoting social inclusion and community value. She is an active member of the Women in Social Housing network group, and enjoys taking part in debates and talks around equality and diversity.

Edith Stokes
Associate Consultant, Housing Diversity Network

Edith is the founder of ECS Consulting, an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) consultancy that specialises in championing equity within the housing sector. She is an Associate Consultant with the Housing Diversity Network (HDN) and has previously served as Interim Director at Leadership 2025, where she provided strategic leadership and hands-on expertise. Edith also works with organisations beyond the housing sector, including the University of Oxford, bringing a cross-sector perspective to her work. Through her consultancy and advisory work, Edith supports organisations to embed inclusive practice, strengthen accountability, and deliver meaningful, positive outcomes for the communities they serve.

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.

John Wallace
Director of Procurement, Clarion Housing Group

John joined Clarion Housing Group as the Director of Procurement in 2021, having previously worked as Procurement Director for the Metropolitan Thames Valley housing association. In addition, he is Chief Officer for the National Housing Procurement Association. John began his career as a laboratory assistant before becoming a qualified Master Brewer. Having spent 10 years in brewing production, John moved onto various procurement roles in the industry prior to spending two years in the food industry working for one of the country’s leading chilled food producers. In 2006 he joined the NHS, being involved in the growth and development of two regional procurement organisations before joining Anchor in the role of Head of Procurement and Purchasing.

Jonathan Walters
Deputy Chief Executive, Regulator of Social Housing

Having previously been at Ernst and Young working in social housing consultancy, Jonathan has been at the Regulator since 2004. He has worked across the organisation and has extensive experience in dealing with funders, government and housing associations.

Les Warren
Executive Director, Reside with Progress

Les Warren is Executive Director (RWP & Growth) at the Progress Housing Group. He leads the Group’s supported living division, RWP (Reside with Progress). RWP is one of the leading providers of supported living to adults with learning disabilities and autistic people in the UK. He has held senior positions in social housing and the wider for-profit property sector. Les is also a Chartered Accountant and holds an MBA from the University of Cape Town.

Catherine Wilson
Director, Housing Valuation, Savills

Leading the Savills Affordable Housing Valuation team of circa 30 RICS Registered Valuers, Catherine has over 16 years experience providing valuations for a range of funders and borrowers across the UK. Specialising in Loan Security valuations, Catherine has worked on some of the largest own name bond issues in the sector and leads a team of specialist valuers providing valuations for acquisition, disposal, loan security, privatisation, and investment portfolios, as well as strategic property advice to residential and commercial occupiers. The Savills Affordable Housing provides a range of strategic and property consultancy advice to housing associations, local authorities, For Profit Registered Providers, funders, investors and developers.