Helia Ebrahimi
Economics Correspondent, Channel 4

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.

Nabeel Alhassan
Financial Planning Manager, Accent Group

Nick Atkin
Chief Executive, Yorkshire Housing

Nick has a track record of leading organisations through transformational change, driving performance improvement, with a focus on maximising the untapped potential from businesses and people. Born and brought up in Doncaster he joined Yorkshire Housing in 2019. Since this time, he’s delivered transformational change throughout the business to meet the future opportunities and challenges. Nick has previously introduced a fully flexible/ remote working approach. He also led the move to 90% of customer led transactions to be delivered through online self-service channels. He is a keen advocate of innovation and uses digital as an enabler to drive fundamental change in how businesses operate. He is also a disruptor in the ‘future of work’ debate and has been paperless for 19 years.

Gemma Bell
Partner, Devonshires

Gemma advises on a range of areas including social housing regulatory, charity law, governance, company and community benefit society law, corporate restructuring projects, joint ventures, stock transfers and mergers and acquisitions. Gemma acts for a range of clients nationally including housing associations, local authorities, charities and social enterprises.

Sarah Coles
Head of Safety and Improvement Finance, Innovative Funding, Welsh Government

Ilona Cristea
Assistant Finance Director, Peabody

Edward Farnsworth
Deputy Group Finance Director, L&Q

Ed has worked at L&Q for 18 years in various Finance roles and was appointed Deputy Group Finance Director in 2019. He is a qualified accountant with extensive experience of working in the social housing finance sector. He has been instrumental at L&Q in forging a financial strategy, based on strong commercial discipline while setting risk appetite and tolerance levels that maximise output of news homes delivery while safeguarding social housing assets and maintaining customer, investor, regulator and board confidence. He has extensive experience of property investment and holds board positions on L&Q’s strategic land business, L&Q Estates, which holds 50,000 land plots and on Barking Riverside a joint venture with the GLA delivering 10,800 new homes, as well as experience of board membership on multiple joint ventures with volume housebuilders. He also chairs L&Q’s Senior Leadership Group and L&Q’s ‘Investment & Property Group’ responsible for approving and monitoring individual development projects up to £100m total cost. Ed also sits on the Board and chairs the audit committee of the North London Muslim Housing Association (NLMHA) that operates in his home community.

Mike Figg
Head of Social Housing, Barclays

Mike is Head of Social Housing at Barclay’s, leading a national team of Relationship Directors serving over 200 Registered Providers throughout the UK. Mike has over 20 years of experience in Financial Services, predominantly at HSBC where he started in debt origination but spent the last 14 years focused on relationship coverage. His last role at HSBC was Deputy Head of Housing, part of the leadership of a team covering Social and Affordable Housing, traditional housebuilders, private rental sector and student accommodation.

Alison Gray
Head of Social Housing Debt Finance, Barclays

Mike Grimditch
Director of Financial Strategy, Greensquare Accord

Sam Grix
Partner, Devonshires

Samantha was called to the Bar in October 2008 at the Inner Temple and cross-qualified as a solicitor in November 2010. She started her career at Devonshires Solicitors as a Paralegal and was invited to remain post-qualification due to her proven ability and great relationships with clients. Samantha was promoted to Partner in April 2022.

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.

Ian McDermott
Chief Executive, Peabody

Ian has 30 years’ experience in the housing sector. Before joining Peabody, Ian was the, CEO at Catalyst Housing, Chief Executive at Aldwyck Housing Group and Chief Operating Officer at Sanctuary Group. Ian has also held Chief Executive positions at both Shaftesbury Housing Group and Stonebridge Housing Action Trust. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing, a Chartered Surveyor and an alumnus of the Harvard Business School.

Priya Nair
Chief Executive, The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC)

A senior executive with over 25 years’ experience in financial services, infrastructure and housing, Priya is passionate about leveraging sustainable, long-term investment to help deliver positive economic and societal outcomes in the affordable housing sector. Before joining in March 2024, Priya was a Senior Director at abrdn in its infrastructure team. With a focus on infrastructure and housing, Priya was responsible for financing, capital raising and deal strategy across all its flagship infrastructure funds and investments. Prior to that, Priya spent over 13 years at the Royal Bank of Canada in their global private markets team and seven years at Citi. In addition to leading THFC, Priya acts as a senior advisor to organisations working across government, infrastructure and technology where she provides counsel on corporate finance, governance, risk management and investment strategies. She is a Non-Executive Director and the Chair of the Investment Committee at the Port of London Authority and a Senior Adviser to Good Governance Capital. Priya also supports several non-profit originations and charities with a focus on sport and education. She is currently a Senior Trustee of community sports charity, Sported, the UK’s largest network of community groups supporting half a million young people through the power of sport.

Richard Petty
Head of UK Residential Valuation, JLL

Richard Petty is the Head of UK Residential Valuation at JLL, with responsibility for all the residential valuation teams across the country. The Residential Valuation teams cover the full range of residential property and specialist sectors including affordable housing, prime residential, PRS, build-to-rent and strategic advisory work on residential portfolios. The JLL Residential Valuation team is made up of 120 specialist staff, based in nine cities: London, Bristol, Exeter, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh,together giving complete, national coverage. Richard has over 37 years’ professional experience, with the last 28 years principally focussed on the affordable housing sector. He and the JLL affordable housing team advise on all aspects of the valuation of affordable housing, acting for all the lenders in the sector and for over 300 RPs, large and small, including all members of the G15; as well as leading equity investors, private developers and local authorities.

Arun Poobalasingam
Chief Partnerships Officer, The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC)

Arun joined THFC in 2021 as Head of Relationship Management and Business Development and is now Funding and Marketing Director. He joined from HSBC where he helped set up and then lead their Social Housing business focussing predominantly on larger housing associations. Having started his career working at Diageo, he moved to Network Rail where starting as a financial modeller he moved on to the Treasury team that raised over £20bn of debt through the Global Capital Markets during his stint. He left to join HSBC in 2007 to join their Real Estate team at an interesting time for the sector and specialised in property for most of his time there.

Julia Poulter
Head of Social Housing, Crowe

Julia leads the national social housing team and has over 20 years’ experience of auditing and advising a range of social housing providers as well as a mix of charities, social purpose and commercial organisations. Julia has also carried out advisory projects such as technical accounting advice and advisory reviews in areas such as reserves, efficiency and cost optimisation, structure and governance and due diligence. She has a keen interest in technical matters and training in the sector and represents Crowe as Technical Advisor to the Housing SORP Working Party, she regularly trains staff and clients on key sector matters, including accounting, risk, governance and Audit Committee responsibilities. In a voluntary capacity Julia is Chair of a homelessness charity providing housing advice, support and hosted accommodation. Julia is also a registered speaker for schools, regularly speaking to young people about routes into accountancy, apprenticeships and interview skills.

Alessandra Raja
Business Transformation Partner, RSM UK

Mike Richardson
Partner, LCP

Mike is a partner in LCP’s social housing and not-for-profit consulting teams. He heads up LCP’s Social Housing practice and has extensive experience of advising employers who participate in the Social Housing Pension Scheme (SHPS) and the Growth Plan, both of which are part of The Pensions Trust (TPT), and who participate in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). He is also the appointed Scheme Actuary to a scheme operated by a large housing association.

Will Roberts
Vice President, Venn Partners

Naomi Roper
Partner and Head of Banking, Capsticks

Naomi is a partner and the Head of Banking at Capsticks. Naomi specialises in social housing finance where she has years of experience acting for borrowers and lenders in the social housing sector. Naomi provides advice and guidance on social housing finance and development finance, including advising on all types of loan agreements, security and security trust arrangements, debt restructuring, complex intra-group arrangements, joint ventures, private placements, derivatives and debt capital markets transactions including own name bond issues and EMTN programmes. Naomi is also an ESG specialist working in the fields of green, social and sustainable finance and impact measurement. Naomi provides advice on green loans, social loans and sustainability linked loans and bonds. Naomi sits on the City of London Law Society’s ESG Committee.

Grant Shipley
Executive Director of Finance, Wandle Housing Association

Grant is an experienced finance director who has worked in the housing sector for over 30 years in executive, interim and consultancy roles. He has a clear focus on providing high quality management information and delivering business improvement services for clients, both directly and through his own consultancy company. He joined Wandle in 2021.

James Tarrant
Director, Savills Financial Consultants

James is a Corporate Finance and Treasury specialist. James joined Savills Financial Consultants in April 2024 from GreenSquareAccord where he was Director of Corporate Finance & Treasury for ~five years. Prior to working in the housing sector, he held senior treasury roles in insurance, funds management and banking both in Australia and the UK. James has significant experience in managing, restructuring and simplifying complex debt portfolios and acquiring and divesting real asset portfolios. James has Won or been Highly Commended at the ACT Deal of the Year Awards a number of times for a different transactions and for leading teams across different sectors.

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.

Suzanne Whelan
Director of Financial Reporting & MI, The Guinness Partnership

Suzanne is Director of Financial Reporting and MI at the Guinness Partnership, responsible for leading Finance and Data Analytics operations across the Group. She has over 20 years’ experience in social and supported housing sectors and has worked at Guinness since 2017.

Piers Williamson
Chair, Sustainability for Housing

Piers Williamson was appointed the chair of Sustainability for Housing (SfH) in September 2024. Piers stepped down as chief executive of The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) in 2024, the leading bond aggregator for the social housing sector, after 22 years in charge. During his time at THFC, the group’s loan book grew to more than £8bn and the organisation created its sustainable bond framework as well as THFC Sustainable Finance, a vehicle aimed at helping housing associations tackle net zero targets. The aggregator also became the first lender in the sector to publish an ESG report.

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.

Sophie Wint
Director of Finance and Procurement, Newport City Homes