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Sovereign appoints property services director
Sovereign has made a new appointment to its executive team, with the hire of a new property services director.
Nicole Sharp will step up from her current role as customer services director to become executive director of property services.
She will take over from Steve Barford from the beginning of July. Mr Barford is leaving the organisation.
Sovereign is one of the country’s largest housing associations, managing nearly 59,000 homes.
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In 2017, it brought all its repairs in house. And in October, the association announced plans to merge its two maintenance arms by 2020, closing a subsidiary that once managed 45,000 homes for other housing providers.
Mark Washer, chief executive of Sovereign, said: “Nicole is an experienced director who’s been instrumental in leading our strategic development and the delivery of housing and landlord services, including managing a business-wide customer contact centre.
“Passionate about developing a forward-thinking, customer-centric culture, Nicole’s played a key role in Sovereign’s digital transformation, creating a strong platform from which we can deliver on our customer commitments.
“I’m also delighted that we were able to fill such a critical role from our own senior leadership group – highlighting the considerable talent pool within our organisation.”
Ms Sharp said: “Providing safe, secure, well-maintained homes to our current and future residents is something I feel passionately about.
“How a person feels about their home strongly influences what that they think about Sovereign as their landlord, so it’s really important that we listen to what our residents say about us, using this to shape and make positive changes to our repairs and maintenance services.
“By combining this with the use of data and predictive analytics, we’ll really be able to enhance the customer experience.”
Last month, Sovereign appointed Kevin Ives as its first chief information officer.
Mr Ives – formerly of Arriva Trains, Balfour Beatty, Transport for London and Thames Water – will join the association on 1 August.
