I have worked at a senior level in housing for over 20 years including 10 years as Chief Executive of TPAS and 2 years as Executive Director of Tenant Services at the Social Housing Regulator. I currently work as an independent consultant specialising in tenant scrutiny and involvement and as a non-executive in housing and health, including being Chair of Healthwatch Salford and Vice Chair of the Guinness Partnership.

Richard was appointed as Housing Ombudsman from 1 September 2019. He has extensive experience in the housing sector, with previous roles including Deputy Mayor of London for Housing, chair of the Homes for London board, and a non-executive director of Homes England.

During his eight years at the Greater London Authority, Richard was responsible for housing investment and land regeneration programmes. He also led the creation of the first team at City Hall to address rough sleeping, commissioning around £10 million of services each year, as well as the first Social Impact Bond on homelessness.

Richard is a former board member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and has been an election observer in Somaliland and the Ukraine.  He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and sits on the Administrative Justice Council.

Richard also chairs the Ombudsman Association and is a board member of the British Library.

Steph joined Golding in February 2022 from fellow Kent landlord mhs Homes, where she’d been Operations Director for four years.

Steph’s passionate about housing and the role housing associations can play in stepping up to help combat the housing crisis, improve quality of lives and deliver the excellent services that all customers have the right to receive.

Steph brings a wealth of experience, both from Board level and a range of senior roles, most recently at mhs and previously Medway Council. She’s also a trustee for Kent-based homeless charity, Porchlight.

Chris Czyzyk is the Customer Experience Manager for SHG, an award winning, TPAS-accredited ALMO providing Social Housing in Stockport.  With over 17 years’ experience in the sector, as a front-line Customer Service advisor, complaints handler, and complaints manager, Chris brings a wealth of insight into understanding residents’ expectations and effective complaint handling.  In his current role as Customer Experience Manager at SHG, he is focussed on building upon a customer-centric culture and improving services based on customer feedback and use of performance data, being passionate about raising the power of the residents’ voice within the organisation.

Pete Linsley is a Housing Professional with twenty years’ experience in social housing across the North West of England and currently leads on delivery of Council Housing Services for Lancaster City Council, an ambitious stock retained district Council in the North of England. Pete is convinced that the quality, safety, and security of the places we call home is crucial to health, happiness and achievement in life, and that social housing has a vital role to play

Maureen has worked in social housing for over 30 years. She started as a tenant and community activist in London, where she helped found several housing cooperatives and was active in many other housing and community projects, including the successful Coin Street campaign in London’s South Bank where the local community successfully fought for ‘homes not offices’.

She went on to work professionally in housing, rising up the ranks from being a front-line housing officer to become Head of Housing in the Audit Commission for London where she ran the housing inspection regime. She has also worked as a housing consultant and coach, taught on the housing and community studies degree at Birkbeck College and served on several housing association boards. She is a Churchill Fellow who has published research on lessons the UK can learn from housing in Germany and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing. She currently works as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide.

After studying Corpus Linguistics during an MA at Newcastle University, Steve Erdal formed his own linguistics-led marketing consultancy in 2014.  In this role, Steve produced a range of linguistics-based research for a variety of HE organisations, including Oxford, Edinburgh, Durham, York, Queen’s Belfast, Bath and Cardiff.

Steve co-founded Wordnerds, an AI-led Text Analysis platform, in 2017. The platform uses Deep Learning, techniques in order to automate the process of teaching computers language.

In his spare time, Steve enjoys getting things off high shelves and being outwitted by his two young children.