We ensure that we have a diverse range of representation throughout our leadership structure. This extends beyond our Group Board to the boards of:
- Clarion Housing Association
- Clarion Futures, our charitable foundation
- Latimer, our development arm.
The Regulator of Social Housing rates Clarion Housing Group's governance as G1. This is the highest possible rating, reflecting the quality of our leadership.
David Orr CBE, Chair1/Of13
Clarion Housing Association Board members
Andrew, a former partner at legal firm Winckworth Sherwood, has more than 25 years’ experience in advising on major housing projects. He has particular expertise in regeneration, in mergers and in establishing new organisations. He was lead partner for Notting Hill Genesis on the Aylesbury Estate and Grahame Park regeneration projects, which involved more than 4,000 new homes in total. Andrew has acted on many joint ventures between national house-builders and registered providers. He is also a trustee of the Discover Children's Story Centre in Newham and a school governor.
David is a former Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation. He has spent more than 35 years in the housing sector, in a career that has included roles as:
- Chief Executive, Newlon Homes
- President, Housing Europe
- Chief Executive, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations
- Associate Director, Homes at the Centre for Ageing Better
- Chair of Reall, an international development housing charity
- Member, Archbishop of Canterbury’s Housing, Church and Community Commission.
David’s current roles include:
- Chair, Canal and River Trust
- Chair of both ReSI Housing and ReSI Homes
- Board member, Clanmil Housing Group
- Board member, National Communities Resource Centre.
Gloria has a wealth of cross sector managerial experience. This includes being managing director of a marketing company, a restaurateur, and mailing manager with Readers Digest. Gloria was previously a member of the Circle Housing Roddons Board.
She is currently a member of the National Property Improvement Group and a Housing Ombudsman Panel.
Outside of the housing world Gloria is Chair of the Manea Education Foundation Trust. She enjoys her involvement with the village community and its many committees including the numerous issues and challenges Fenland is currently experiencing.
Michelle is responsible for delivering a consistently good quality, comprehensive service for all Clarion customers and ensuring that customers remain at the heart of our business, improving the customer experience and representing the voice of our customers. She is also Executive lead for Clarion Futures, Clarion’s charitable foundation.
Michelle has more than 30 years’ experience in the housing sector. Formerly Clarion’s Chief Operating Officer and Group Director for Commercial Services, her previous roles include Executive Director and Director-level roles at Affinity Sutton and Ridgehill Housing Association. She has also held senior roles at William Sutton Housing Association, and was the Chief Executive of Aashyana, an Asian-led housing association in the South West.
Preetha is a chartered accountant with more than 25 years’ experience working in finance leadership roles in consumer-facing organisations. She combines commercial and strategic insight with technical expertise to work with Boards to drive growth, restructure operations and drive change in businesses in the UK and internationally.
Preetha has worked for leading retail, consumer, online, aviation and infrastructure companies including:
- Tesco
- John Lewis
- WHSmith
- Heathrow Airport
She also has a background in consulting and professional services at Accenture and PwC.
Paul has held executive level roles in housing development, regeneration, asset management and business development for more than 25 years. He has experience as CEO and managing director in both the private and affordable housing sectors. He has managed more than 350 staff and overseen projects employing more than 1,200 construction workers.
His roles have included
- control of annual budgets exceeding £120m
- strategic responsibility for investment planning of £0.5bn over 5 years
- strategic responsibility for investment planning of £2bn over 30 years.
Paul has particular expertise in housing development and asset management. He has been personally involved in the purchase or development of more than 10,000 affordable homes. He is a voluntary, co-opted, non-executive director of Leathermarket Community Benefit Society.
Richard has been a Clarion resident in Newton Le Willows, Merseyside for 14 years. He has a wealth of experience of working within the public and housing sectors, including roles covering finance, estate and property management and Home Ownership. Richard was a member of the Affinity Sutton North Scrutiny Board, has been a green inspector and a tenant representative on grounds maintenance contract procurement, and is trained to serve on complaints panels. Richard is also a member of the Clarion Futures ‘Clarion 55’ resident involvement group.
Rolf is a Co-opted Resident Member of the Clarion Housing Association Board and before the merger, a Member of Circle Housing’s Old Ford Board. He is also an independent member and co-founder of the Old Ford Community Panel. He has been a resident since 2014 and lives in the Bethnal Green area of East London.
His career has mostly focused on high level hotel management and publishing telesales marketing. Rolf enjoys being an active member of the local community and dealing with the challenges and issues of the Housing Association Board.
Rachel is a regulatory expert and Octopus Energy’s Director for Regulation and Economics. She was Chief Executive of Ofwat and held senior positions including at board level in Ofgem. Before that, Rachel worked as an energy strategy and policy consultant, having started her career in international development.
Sasha has held a number of key roles in government departments, including No. 10, the Department for Education and the Cabinet Office. As a Director of the Social Mobility Commission, she has overseen a suite of influential studies that have filled evidence gaps on social mobility and raised the profile of the social mobility agenda in the media and amongst parliamentarians.
Sharon has 20 years of board level experience and is currently a Global Council Member and member of the Remuneration Committee at ACCA. During her career, processes developed by Sharon have been recognised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as best practice and she was listed globally in the Top 50 Women in Accounting 2020 and 2021 for global influence in the profession.
Clarion Futures board members
John has over 30 years’ experience of managing and leading finance and risk teams at a senior level in highly regulated industries, initially in the utilities sector and most recently in social housing. Recently retired he is a trustee and member of the Finance Committee at Herts Young Homeless and recently stepped down from the Board of Groundwork East where he was a trustee and member of the Finance and Audit Committee.
John is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Karima is a corporate lawyer. She has 20 years’ experience of advising on:
- corporate and finance transactions
- mergers & acquisitions
- joint ventures
- structuring, funding and delivery of real estate investment and development projects.
Having trained and practiced at international law firm Hogan Lovells, in 2011 Karima moved in-house to Grosvenor Group where she latterly held the position of Group General Counsel.
Karima currently holds Non-Executive positions on:
- Property & Development Committee of Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
- University of Cambridge’s Property Board
- University Board of Bournemouth University.
Karima is also an accredited mediator with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution.
Lord Barwell is a former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Theresa May, and Minister for Housing, during a political career spanning more than 20 years. He was the Member of Parliament for Croydon Central from 2010 to 2017. Before that he had been a Councillor for the London Borough of Croydon for 12 years. Besides his roles on the Clarion Housing Group and Clarion Futures Boards, Lord Barwell is an adviser to:
- Arcadis
- Avonhurst
- Barratt Developments plc
- Community Fibre
- DLA Piper
- PwC
Patrick is a former senior civil servant in DWP including roles as Director for London, and for East of England. He has had a portfolio career since leaving DWP in 2012. Director of Salientwork Ltd, a personal micro-consultancy working in the employment and employability sector with clients in the UK and the EU. An experienced charity Trustee, he is currently Chair of Trustees at Groundwork East, and Vice-Chair of Papworth Trust. He has been a Trustee of Clarion Futures since 2018.
Usha is Associate Professor of Consumer and Digital Marketing in Norwich Business School University of East Anglia and the Associate Dean for the Social Sciences Faculty with portfolio remit for employability and graduate career opportunities. She is a member of the University’s Governing Council and sits on the Digital Transformation Steering Committee overseeing a strategically important digital transformation programme for the university.
Usha has more than three decades of international experience working in media, hospitality, and marketing and more than 20 years of international higher education experience in areas of education, research, training and development, and strategic change including digital economies. In addition, she is widely experienced in all matters of governance and student experience.
She researches, writes, and publishes in the areas of:
- regional economies
- clusters and innovation
- digital marketing
- analytics
- digital transformation and change management
- digital economies and applications of digital technologies in business.
Usha consults with businesses in areas of digital change and the intersection of markets, technology, and consumer culture. She also mentors digital start-ups.
Usha was previously Non-Executive Director at Circle Wherry. She is also an Independent Governor at City of Norwich School with responsibilities for personal development and safeguarding.
Latimer board members
Chris worked for two of the nation’s largest housebuilders (Lagan Homes UK Ltd and Bowbridge Homes Ltd) for 24 years, prior to setting up his own residential development consultancy company Ashby House, in 2016.
In addition to his role as a Non-Executive Director of Latimer Developments and a member of Clarion Housing Group’s Investment Committee, Chris is also a Non-Executive Director of two regional housebuilding companies in the south midlands area.
Through his consultancy business, Chris works for a variety of landowners, developers, housing associations and local authorities providing project management, commercial, operational process, and viability advice on a wide range of development projects. Chris is currently instructed on several urban extensions for both landowners and local planning authority clients utilising his commercial, planning, and operational delivery experience of major residential led development projects to ensure these projects are robustly planned and are deliverable.
Clare was appointed as our Group Chief Executive in 2018. A chartered accountant, with almost 30 years’ experience in the housing sector, Clare joined the Housing Corporation in 1992 as a financial regulator and over the next 18 years progressed to become its Director of Regulation.
She then became an Executive Director at the Tenant Services Authority, with responsibility for housing association regulation. In 2010 Clare joined Affinity Sutton as Group Director of Governance and Compliance. She took up the same role at Clarion in 2016, before taking on her current role two years later.
Karima is a corporate lawyer. She has 20 years’ experience of advising on:
- corporate and finance transactions
- mergers & acquisitions
- joint ventures
- structuring, funding and delivery of real estate investment and development projects.
Having trained and practiced at international law firm Hogan Lovells, in 2011 Karima moved in-house to Grosvenor Group where she latterly held the position of Group General Counsel.
Karima currently holds Non-Executive positions on:
- Property & Development Committee of Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
- University of Cambridge’s Property Board
- University Board of Bournemouth University.
Karima is also an accredited mediator with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution.
Mark is a chartered accountant and his previous roles include:
- Chief Financial Officer, Sovereign Housing Association
- Director of Finance & Infrastructure, Staffordshire University
- Finance Director, Birmingham International Airport
Richard leads our development arm, Latimer Homes, and is in charge of Clarion Housing Group’s sustainability strategy.
He joined Clarion in February 2019 from Lendlease where he was Head of Residential, delivering over 1,000 new homes each year. Richard also played a key role in the delivery of the London 2012 Athletes’ Village while at Lendlease. He has more than 25 years of experience in the property sector, including roles at companies such as Mace and Taylor Wimpey.
Rob oversees Clarion Response, Grange Property Management and House Exchange. He also leads our:
- rental and commercial property portfolios
- strategic asset management, including regeneration and disposal
- approach to mergers and acquisitions.
Rob joined Clarion in 2016, as Director of Commercial Finance when Clarion was formed. He is a qualified accountant and has held senior finance and director roles in the Domino’s Pizza Group and Network Rail Property.
Rupert was on the Savills plc Main Board, followed by the Group Executive Board for 21 years. He became CEO of Savills UK Subsidiary which employed 2,000 people across 75 offices. Following that he was Head of Global Residential, growing the network to over 600 offices.
Previous Non-Executive Director (NED) roles have included Chairing a leading property web portal, a marketing company during flotation on AIM, and Bournemouth University. He now sits on some external Investment Committees, including Winchester College, and has a number of NED appointments including Pigeon Land Limited, a Development company, and On The Market, a property portal on AIM.