Member Article

Foundations strengthens senior leadership team with four new appointments

Liverpool City Council’s ethical housing company, Foundations, has announced four appointments to strengthen its board and senior management team. Foundations is the flagship housing policy for the Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson, who wants to use the company to rebalance the city’s housing stock, revolutionise the rent to buy sector and drive up council tax receipts for the council. The new non-executive directors are Darrell Mercer and Angela Forshaw who have joined Foundations’ board, bringing with them a range of industry skills and experience. Darrell Mercer is group chief executive of the A2Dominion Group, which is one of the largest property developers in the UK. Darrell has more than 40 years’ experience in the housing sector, and he started his career at Liverpool Housing Trust before moving to the Housing Corporation. Angela Forshaw is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and between 2008 and 2019 was the executive director of operation at Liverpool Mutual Homes (LMH). At LMH Angela had executive responsibility for all housing and property services including asset management and property services; decentralised housing management services; income services; and for company’s non-housing charity, ComMutual. Foundations has also recruited two new colleagues to its senior management team. Louise Davies has joined Foundations as development director, bringing with her more than 17 years’ experience in the housing sector. Most recently, Louise was group development director at Sovini Housing Group, where she led on the delivery of a diverse range of affordable housing programmes. Foundations’ new finance director, Liam Knowles, will join the company from Sovini Group. In his role as group finance manager for Sovini, Liam has helped to provide financial oversight for a major £200m build programme. Frank Hont, Chair of Foundations, said: “Foundations is at an incredibly exciting period in its growth and we are delighted to be welcoming an experienced group of people to join our senior team.
“We’re very pleased to have appointed both Angela and Darrell to our board and we’re looking forward to gaining their insight and the wealth of industry experience that they will bring to the table. “Foundations has a major stake in the future of Liverpool’s housing market and we’ve been committed to building a team of experts who will work to ensure that we can meet our ambitions. The arrival of both Louise and Liam to the team reflects our desire to continue to strengthen Foundations’ offering and their experience and knowledge will be invaluable as we enter an exciting new chapter of growth.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ben Lancaster .