Sovereign hires former Catalyst property boss as development director

Sovereign hires former Catalyst property boss as development director

NEWS12/11/182:45 PMBY JACK SIMPSON

Sovereign Housing Association has hired former Catalyst property director Tom Titherington as its new executive director for development and commercial.

Mr Titherington will begin his role on 21 January 2019 and take over from Dale Meredith, who has been interim director since Ben Denton left the role to join L&G’s affordable homes business as managing director.

Mr Titherington spent seven years as director of property and growth at Catalyst before revealing he would be leaving the company in August.

Prior to this, he was chief executive of Network Housing Group for two years and also spent 13 years as director of business development at Hyde Group.

Tom Titherington, executive director of property and growth at Catalyst, has quit just weeks after the London-based housing association appointed a new chief executive. Housing industry veteran Mr Titherington, who has been an executive director at the 21,000-homes group since early 2017, is leaving the association at the end of next month to seek a different role in the sector.

His departure comes after Catalyst last month revealed it had appointed Aldwyck Housing Group’s boss Ian McDermott to take over from its current chief executive at the end of this year.

A Catalyst spokesperson told Inside Housing that Mr Titherington’s exit did not form part of any wider management restructuring.

Mr Titherington said: “After seven eventful and fulfilling years at Catalyst, I have decided to move on. I have had a great time working here and am really proud of what we’ve achieved. I leave behind a great team that will achieve great things.

“I’ve been working in housing for over 36 years at a very senior level for 24. I now want to see if I can work and contribute in a different way.”

He first joined Catalyst in 2011 as executive director of business development and market intelligence

Catalyst Housing Ltd

Directorate Change

RNS Number : 7069Y

Catalyst Housing Limited

23 August 2018

Changes to key personnel:

After seven years with Catalyst Housing Limited, Tom Titherington (Executive Director for Property & Growth) has decided to leave the business to pursue other interests. Tom will be moving on at the end of September and Rod Cahill (Chief Executive) will be overseeing the Property & Growth department until such time as a replacement is appointed.

Housing associations face storm of complaints over new-build homes

Residents of London developments built with public funding tell of damp, lack of security, rats and poor customer service

Housing associations responsible for more than 175,000 homes are facing allegations of serial neglect of their residents and properties, focused on an array of new-build developments in London that have received more than £60m in public money.

The issues uncovered by a Guardian investigation include damp, mould, nonexistent security, outages in heating and hot water, inadequate repairs, and infestation by rats and mice. There are also many complaints about poor and often misleading customer service.

The investigation found issues with five housing associations: Catalyst, Sanctuary, Notting Hill Housing, Wandle, and the One Housing Group. Residents raised problems including:

Failing lifts that rendered a wheelchair user housebound for a week and a half.

Security failures that meant premises were open to intruders over a period of months.

Families repeatedly left without heating or hot water.

The cases involve both tenants, and some among the rising numbers of people in London who live in shared-ownership properties in which housing associations retain a stake. Some of them also highlight alleged failings by big building firms.

a new estate in east London owned and run by Clarion Housing, the UK’s largest housing association, and funded by £30m of public money. Over the past three years, residents there have complained about a huge range of problems, many apparently related to poor building standards. Last month, after Clarion agreed to buy back some of the affected properties, the association’s chairman resigned.

“There’s clearly something going wrong in the new-build housing market to do with standards, and it needs to be tackled,” he said.

changing culture of many big housing associations. “The big housing associations have become massive developers. They’re expanding very quickly. To my mind, some of them have lost their focus on housing need, and managing their existing homes,

Catalyst Housing oversees more than 21,000 homes across London and the south-east. At its Caulfield Park development in south Acton, west London, which was completed in 2011 and assisted by £19.5m in grants from the Greater London Authority (GLA), residents say they have complained for five years about repeatedly broken lifts, infestation by rats and mice, and faulty plumbing.

Chris Babet, a Catalyst tenant who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, lives in a fifth-floor flat with his family. He says in early 2016 both lifts in his block broke down simultaneously and he was left housebound for a week and a half. He also says he requested electronic door-opening equipment from the housing association, which he needed to avoid his wheelchair being damaged by opening and closing doors, but that it only arrived after the intervention of his MP, 18 months after his initial request.

He says hot water in his family’s flat is often intermittent, at best. Though Willmott Dixon, the builders which constructed Caulfield Park, say “there are no openings left within walls and ceilings of individual properties following our work”, other residents say mice and rats get into their properties through such cavities, and that their presence results in a smell traceable to the animals’ urine and excrement, and noise they can hear in their flats. “In the evenings, you can hear them going through the ceilings and in the walls – just running around,” said Zakirya Mohammed, who has lived in his flat since 2012. “We’ve complained to Catalyst several times about this, and got nothing.”

staff reviewd.

"There is free tea and coffee (I don’t drink much but good for the majority of employees)" (in 6 reviews)

"A great place to start a career, but don't stick around for too long" (in 5 reviews)

Cons

"Lots of change can be a good thing or a bad thing" (in 6 reviews)

"Further the constant talk of restructure by senior managers who have absolutely no idea what you do is very frustrating"

Cons

I think the business can work on it's transparency, this has been an I'm going issue. Things happen in the business and because Catalyst aren't transparent, it comes across as they are hiding things. There also seems to be a high turnover in HR which can make hangovers a little fragmented. As a colleague, if I am going through a difficult/sensitive/confidential situation, It would be nice to have one point of contact. Also, mistakes are made from new members of staff.

Cons

They will never have you back when something is going wrong and is quick to get rid of you to cover there name instead of backing you up

Cons

- People dread coming to work to deal with management cliques - HR assume your the problem. Staff feel stuck. - Dodgy managerial appointments - favouritism over merit - Some leaders/senior managers act tough because they think it makes them more 'commercial' and shows they take tough decisions - it doesn't - gets in way of a fix and makes staff reluctant to engage. - Awful programme delivery

Hyde housing association sees complaints soar

A typical day was hectic and although I learnt a lot in the time i was there about housing. The Management there used intimidation methods to get work completed and threats. The hard part of the day was working with a manager who had clearly been there a long time but was clueless. She used threatening behaviour to pressurzed you to complete tasks, for example, she said once "if you do not learn this quickly and by the end of the week I will replace you". Pretty horriffic given you were working as a contractor.

Cons

bullying from the housing staffs and management

Cons

confused managment

Cons

Too much focus on performance indicators and targets and not enough on tenants............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................