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Mark my words: we meet the new CEO of Sovereign

Five months into his new role as chief executive of Sovereign, Mark Washer speaks to Luke Barratt about ambition, diversity and avoiding Southern Rail.  Photography by Matt Gore

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We speak to new @sovereignha CEO Mark Washer about ambition, diversity and avoiding Southern Rail #ukhousing

“We need to do land-led development - it really puts us in control" says @sovereignha CEO Mark Washer #ukhousing

“Every last penny of a housing association’s profit or surplus is reinvested in its social purpose” Mark Washer of @sovereignha dismisses the idea that housing associations are losing their social purpose #ukhousing

Perhaps understandably, Mark Washer, recently installed chief executive of Sovereign, is not overly keen to discuss his old employer.

For the first time in 17 years, the former finance chief of Clarion, who also worked at four of its legacy associations pre-merger, is at a new organisation.

He left that position at a time of upheaval for the UK’s largest housing association, almost immediately after Ruth Cooke took over as chief executive, replacing Mr Washer’s long-standing and now retired boss Keith Exford.

Ms Cooke herself only lasted six months in the role, resigning in October.

“I’m not really here to talk about Clarion,” Mr Washer tells Inside Housing. Although he briefly acquiesces: “It was exciting. You find yourself in a job for 17 years, and you think, ‘How did that happen?’ and it was because there was always something going on that was new and exciting.”

If history is anything to go by, he might be in it for the long haul at Sovereign, too. He is only the third chief executive in the association’s history, since it was formed as West Berkshire Housing in 1989 through a stock transfer for then-Newbury District Council.


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But Sovereign’s new leader is used to managing change as well. Mr Washer began working alongside Mr Exford at Broomleigh Housing Association, before a series of mergers culminated in the creation of Clarion two years ago.

When Mr Exford finally stepped down, his finance officer was considered to be a frontrunner to replace him but this didn’t happen. Did he, like Clarion’s new chief executive Clare Miller, apply for the job?.

At this question, a rare stern note enters Mr Washer’s voice. “Like I say,” he repeats, “I’m not here to talk about Clarion.”

It‘s easy to understand why, as 55,000-home Sovereign – one of the sector’s biggest players – presents a huge opportunity for Mr Washer. The 56-year-old is enjoying life in his new role and is already making an impact.

He joins at a time of significant change for the organisation, with two key members of the executive team following former chief executive Ann Santry out of the door.

Ben Denton, the association’s former property and development director, left after only 10 months to head up institutional investor Legal & General’s ambitious new for-profit registered provider.

At around the same time, Mark Hattersley, former finance officer at Sovereign, left to take up Mr Washer’s old job at Clarion.

Among these departures, Mr Washer radiates calm.

His desk is as immaculately tidy as his navy blue suit, save for some artfully placed copies of Inside Housing. A large brick balcony behind his chair looks out over a crisp and peaceful winter morning in Newbury.

Fishing a green tea bag out of a stash in his desk drawer, Mr Washer notes that a few vacancies at executive level can be a positive thing.

“It gives you an opportunity to pause and step back and think with the rest of the executive board, ‘How do we want to structure this? How do we want to make this work?’.

“One of the things I’m doing is creating a chief information officer role on the executive board. It’s not about IT, it’s about how the business thinks about itself. It’s about looking at the operating model and ensuring that we’re joined up across the business. It’s about putting data at the heart of it and ensuring that the data is accurate, reliable and easily accessible.”

Another change he’s bringing to the company is on development, a department Tom Titherington, who was executive director of property and growth at Catalyst, is set to head up when he joins in January.

In the past, 85% of Sovereign’s development has come from Section 106, a planning mechanism through which private developers fund affordable housing as part of their planning agreements with local authorities. Mr Washer, however, plans to change this, with Sovereign taking the lead on developing more of its own sites.

“We’re on a bit of a journey,” he explains. “We need to do land-led [development]. The thing for me – and many housing associations are on this journey – is that it really puts us in control.”

Sovereign built 1,200 homes last year. It predicts that it will build 1,600 homes this year and hopes to get this figure up to 1,900 eventually.

Mr Washer continues: “There will be some larger-scale schemes than we have historically been used to [building]. It remains to be seen what we will end up doing, but I certainly think that part of the solution to the supply crisis is new settlements.”

“We need to do land-led [development]. The thing for me – and many housing associations are on this journey – is that it really puts us in control.”

Mr Washer, it appears, is good at looking on the bright side. One advantage of the new job is that he no longer has to deal with the commute from his hometown of Brighton to London.

These days he is typically in Newbury throughout the week but drives back to his South Coast home on the weekends.

“It’s definitely nice to have a break from Southern Rail, which was a bit of a nightmare,” he laughs. “But I’m clocking up the miles in the car because the patch is quite extensive. It was getting on for 1,000 miles a couple of weeks ago.”

This recent uptick in Mr Washer’s carbon emissions can be put down to a series of roadshows he did with the board, visiting nine of Sovereign’s offices around the South of England.

During this grand tour, he managed to meet “over 90%” of Sovereign’s 2,000 members of staff, he reveals, introducing himself to them and explaining his vision for the organisation.

Mark my words 2

“If residents are the heart, I suppose staff are the soul of the organisation,” he muses. “It’s really important to make sure that people are able to – it sounds a bit crass but – be authentic and be themselves. Diversity and inclusion are really important to me.”

This, indeed, is a theme that goes right back to Mr Washer’s earliest involvement in the social housing sector.

He started his career as an accountant at Deloitte, then called Touche Ross, but, he says, quickly decided he didn’t want to stay in an “entirely commercial environment forever”.

He recalls: “One of the reasons I was attracted to the sector is that as an out gay man in the early 1990s, I thought it was a place where you could actually be a bit more open and I would feel a bit more comfortable than that very corporate, city, big accountancy firm.”

At the recommendation of a friend, he joined the finance department of the housing association Circle 33.

"Has the rent cut forced some associations to look at their cost base? I’m sure it has. That always has to be a good thing."

“It was a very different sector at the time,” he says. “This was the early ’90s. I probably came in at the end of the baggy jumpers and open-toed sandals stage.

“It was partly just because of a ‘small p’ political view of what I wanted to do and not wanting to work entirely in that commercial world but also wanting to, in a small way, bring some of those professional disciplines to play in that third-sector environment.”

Anyone familiar with Mr Washer’s career to date will be unsurprised to hear this. He has frequently been heard at conferences encouraging housing association executives to search for efficiency savings.

Social housing professionals don’t tend to agree with George Osborne about much, but driving efficiencies in housing associations was also one of the former chancellor’s aims.
In 2015, he announced a five-year rent cut for housing associations, drastically cutting their income.

Mr Washer responds with a laugh when asked if this policy was good or bad for housing associations.

“That’s an interesting question,” he says. “It did shake up the sector a bit. It certainly impacted on our ability to build new homes. Without the rent cut and with those areas of efficiency, we would certainly be able to be building more.

“It has definitely impacted on our capacity. Has it forced some associations to look at their cost base? I’m sure it has. That always has to be a good thing, if we’re talking about effective use of our income.”

Mark my words 3

Overall, though, Mr Washer is not complimentary about the Cameron-Osborne years. They, he says, described the sector “as part of the problem, not part of the solution”.

“In ways that you can’t necessarily put your finger on, that does wear you down because you think, ‘Some of the most senior politicians in the country are saying we’re not doing a good job’. If you know the sector, you look around the sector and you think, ‘I don’t really recognise that’.”

The rhetoric from the current government, however, has changed significantly. Theresa May has sought to win over the sector with increased grant funding, the scrapping of certain policies opposed by housing associations and a wealth of positive rhetoric.

Mr Washer praises Ms May for this change, noting the importance of having the government standing behind the housing industry.

In September, the prime minister stepped up her pitch with a speech at the National Housing Summit, which was greeted enthusiastically by sector figures.

Although Mr Washer does not disagree with that assessment, in particular welcoming the certainty that comes with the long-term strategic partnerships that she has brought in via Homes England, he does note that when, in her speech, Ms May touched on the positive impact social housing can have, her main point was that it had helped one resident in her constituency to get on the housing ladder.

“Every last penny of a housing association’s profit or surplus is reinvested in its social purpose”

“That is one of the fundamental causes of stigma,” Mr Washer explains. “If the national story is all about the only tenure of choice is homeownership, then where does that take you? Where does it leave you if you’re a tenant? Certainly, where does it leave you if you’re a social tenant?”

In her speech, Ms May also issued a challenge to the sector. The government, she said, has done everything housing associations had been asking for, and now associations need to deliver.

She suggested that providers should not rely so heavily on picking up affordable housing through Section 106 but should instead go out and develop themselves.

As noted already, Sovereign’s shift to more land-led development takes up this challenge directly.

Inevitably, this new approach will lead to Sovereign building more homes for market sale as the association seeks to cross-subsidise development. It’s an area where it has historically done less than its similarly sized competitors.

Movement towards this market has led some to criticise housing associations for losing touch with their social purpose, but Mr Washer gives this argument short shrift.

“Every last penny of a housing association’s profit or surplus is reinvested in its social purpose,” he insists. “If you compare us with the likes of the big developers – look at Persimmon and Jeff Fairburn, his bonus was the size of our surplus to start with. It was about £100m.”

Mr Washer may have some pretty big plans for Sovereign but to the relief of many, a £100m bonus is not among them.

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