Damian Roche (He/His) Email & Phone Number

Northants

Independent freelance and interim consultancy to the social housing sector.Delivering a range of service improvement support to social housing providers, including service reviews, provision of training and support to staff, board members and residents, and facilitation of projects.Senior-level experience within housing associations, Local Authorities, and as a secondee in central Government.

Peterborough, United Kingdom

Delivery of services to 4,700 households in Accent’s Eastern region, including repairs & maintenance, customer safety compliance, tenancy management and sustainability; income management. I am also a member of the Accent Leadership Team.Achievements include:Creation of centralised, specialist homeownership team: Oversaw review of services to homeowners across Accent’s 20,000+ stock, which led to creation of a specialist team, and managed team for four years in addition to my regional teams. Procurement of regional R&M contract: Termination of regional repairs and maintenance contract and successful mobilisation of alternative contractor during pandemic.Procurement of local gardening services: Smooth withdrawal of a number of Leasehold Schemes for the Elderly from a regional grounds maintenance contract and subsequent procurement of locally-based gardeners in response to customer demand.Reduction in current tenant arrears: Managed team responsible for reduction in current tenant arrears to lowest monthly level (at end of October 2020) since November 2018, despite the challenges of the pandemic.

Peterborough, England, United Kingdom

Delivering a range of service improvement support to social housing providers, including service reviews, provision of training and support to staff, board members and residents, and facilitation of projects. - Scrutiny development trainingClients included: Thrive Homes, Havebury Housing Partnership- Regulatory framework training including TSA standards; regulation and inspection; local offers; annual reportsClients included: Tendring DC (residents); York HA (residents); Gosport DC (residents and staff); Network Housing Group (staff); Hanover HA (staff); Oldham Housing Investment Partnership (staff); Riverside Housing Group (staff), Bournemouth Churches HA (staff) - Resident inspector trainingClient: Metropolitan Housing Partnership- Resident inspector training and supportClients included: Guinness Trust, Guinness Care and Support; Central Beds DC - Complaints management trainingClients included: Board members, including residents, of all providers within Circle housing group - Procurement training and supportClient: Homes for Islington- Mentoring and support for resident scrutiny groupsClients included: Cheshire Peaks and Plains HT, New Charter HT

London, England, United Kingdom

Chief Officer for unique, tenant-managed arms’ length management organisation (ALMO) providing services to four tenant-managed estates in London Borough of Lambeth. Oversaw delivery of full housing and estate management service to 2,500 residents and directly managed capital and major works programmes in respect of these estates. Main achievements:- Developed board development programme for the boards of ALMO and TMOs. Sessions included good governance; catering for diversity; and softer skills training such as effective challenge and team working- Negotiated significant increase in URH’s capital allocation for 2008/09- Launched URH’s first capital works programme

London, England, United Kingdom

Member of senior management team for only borough-wide TMO in the country, managing 10,000 properties. Residents were in the majority on the board and had full decision-making powers over the housing management of the stock.Strategic lead on strategy and policy development, including equality and diversity issues, with line management responsibility for Human Resources, IT, Communication and Information, Resident Involvement and Policy Teams. Member of Executive Team;Relevant achievements:- Lead officer for ALMO inspection in 2003 (“two stars with excellent prospects for improvement”) and for re-inspection – awarded “three stars with excellent prospects for improvement” in October 2006- Strategic head of resident involvement which was rated as ‘a significant strength’ by the Audit Commission at inspection - Lead officer on development of board training programme, funded via Innovation into Action grant. A report on the programme was published as positive practice by the Chartered Institute of Housing and cited as good practice by Housing Corporation and Audit Commission. Training included sessions on how the TMO works; effective governance; and softer skills training- Development of and support for area review boards, which scrutinised services at neighbourhood level and were responsible for allocating funds in excess of £500,000 each year for estate improvement projects- Strategic responsibility for design and delivery of comprehensive resident training programme, including technical training on such as repairs and softer skills training such as committee skills - Strategic responsibility for development and delivery of comprehensive staff development programme, including needs analysis and training - Successful applications for Charter Mark, Investors in People, TPAS accreditation

Associate consultant for Housing Quality Network carrying out mock inspections of many housing organisations across the country, including local authorities, ALMOs and RSLs (including LSVT RSLs).

London, England, United Kingdom

Secondee to the ALMO Review Group, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). Key achievements included:- Co-ordinating the work of the ALMO Review Group, which was looking at the long term sustainability of ALMOs.- The drafting of an ODPM consultation paper on the above.

Postgraduate Diploma, Housing

Bachelor'S Degree, Classics