Catherine Slater
Company Secretary & Head of Governance, Legal and Compliance, Trent and Dove Housing

Catherine (or “Cat” as she is also known) has worked in the social housing sector for 12 years; first at Bromford Housing Group and currently at Trent & Dove Housing in Burton, where she is the Company Secretary and Head of Governance and Legal. Prior to that, Cat worked for a multi-national PLC and for a private developer. Cat is legally trained and has spent much of her career in governance and company secretarial practice, where she has supported boards, committees and executive teams to lead effective organisations.

The teams that Cat leads are responsible for board, committee and subsidiary governance, risk management, internal control and assurance, in-house legal services and data protection. Cat is a strong advocate for ‘democratising’ and ‘demystifying’ governance and assurance and is a keen supporter of raising the profile of customer influence and engagement to continuously improve insight and services.

Victor Andrews
Chair, National Housing Federation, Tenant Advisory Panel

Vic believes passionately in voicing the concerns of those people, that for many and various reasons, feel unable to represent themselves. He has also been a Governor of a large Primary school Trust in a deprived area of Essex.

Since becoming a member of his Landlords Tenant Executive Committee, Vic has been a Group Board Observer, and a member of two of his Landlord’s Governance Committees.

As well as a passion for improving the lives of people generally and specifically regarding their right to a safe, affordable place to call their home, within safe neighbourhoods, Vic now welcomes the wider opportunity as Chair of the National Housing Federation Tenants Advisory Panel (TAP), to use his skills and experience to help Social Housing Tenants and Landlords to work collaboratively to achieve better outcomes.

Paul Harris
Chief Customer Officer, Curo Group

Paul joined Curo in 2017 from Acorn Group, an African property management company where he was VP Corporate Affairs. Prior to that he spent five years as Group Director Customer Experience at Unite Students Group where he implemented a highly successful customer digital programme. This was preceded by roles at the South West Regional Development Agency, Laing O’Rourke Group and Royal Mail.

Monica Barnes
Resident Ambassador, Southern Housing

Monica has worked tirelessly for residents in her housing association, Southern Housing. She received an MBE from Princess Anne in February 2022 in recognition of her years of work in making residents' voices heard.

She remains a Resident Ambassador for Southern Housing and was recently awarded the ‘Resident Award’ at the G15 Ethnicity in Housing Awards.

Rachel Mackay
Head of Service Improvement, bpha

Rachel has worked in housing for nearly two decades including roles in policy and research, customer experience, area housing management and anti-social behaviour management, giving her an informed insight into the challenges customers face and what it takes to achieve a good outcome. Her current role puts this into practice, focussing on promoting the customer voice and a customer first culture. This includes establishing new customer engagement and complaints resolution teams, as well as a Service Improvement Panel - set up in August this year – made up of ten bpha customers who will inform and improve how bpha works.

Sarah Sargent
Director of Housing and Neighbourhoods, Guinness Partnerships

Sarah is Director of Housing & Neighbourhoods for the Guinness Partnership where she is responsible for all field based housing and estate services across the country. Before joining the sector in 2019, Sarah held a variety of senior customer service and customer experience roles, primarily in financial services, where for six years she helped lead a customer culture transformation within a large debt recovery company during a period of increasing regulation.