New Shelter chief executive: ‘Our role might need to evolve’

In the housing world, where victories can feel few and far between, 2025 bucked that trend. The Renters’ Rights Act was preceded by the announcement of £39bn in funding for affordable housing, while the long-awaited homelessness strategy arrived just before Christmas.

Taking a breath to celebrate Shelter’s role in such “once-in-a-career” wins was important, Ms Elliott says, but she points to the deepening homelessness crisis as a clear caveat.

“We’ve won a lot of the arguments, but all the numbers are still going in the wrong direction. None of us can sit here and say we’re so pleased with ourselves, because there’s 172,000 children in temporary accommodation.”

With the charity at a crossroads, Inside Housing visited Ms Elliott at Shelter’s HQ to find out more about the charity’s new head, and how she plans to turn campaign success into lasting change.

From charity shops to chief executive

Shelter’s London office is located slap bang on Old Street, inside a red-brick building with ‘FIGHT FOR HOME’ painted across its ground-floor windows. Inside, the open-plan space feels more like a campaign headquarters than an office, full of staff chatting and walls covered in posters.

We’re taken to a quieter upstairs meeting room with views over the City fringes to wait for Ms Elliott. As the photographer clicks away, Ms Elliott takes her seat, rueing that her yellow top is not in keeping with the charity’s trademark red logo painted on the wall behind her.

A “proud Northerner” who grew up in the seaside town of Scarborough, Ms Elliott speaks with a slight Yorkshire accent. Her dad was a youth worker while her mum ran a charity shop. “It has been fascinating – now I’m overseeing a chain of charity shops,” she says.

“My brother was also disabled, in the ’80s, when disability rights weren’t what they are now. So all I ever really wanted to do was go and work in charities and change things and tackle social injustice. In that respect, Shelter is very much a dream job.”

Ms Elliott has spent most of her career leading charities, including the Epilepsy Society and the Neurological Alliance. She also had a brief spell in local government in the mid-2000s, working under Ken Livingstone at the Greater London Authority. That was her first brush with housing, working with planners on the early stages of Crossrail to look at how transport can encourage housebuilding.

So why homelessness? “It’s our strapline, but home really is everything. It sounds like I’m quoting a corporate slogan, but I really believe it.”

As a newcomer to the sector, she has been surprised at just how “broken” the system is, and points at the asylum system and UK prisons as particular drivers towards homelessness.

One of the first things she achieved, before even officially joining, was running a half-marathon for Shelter. “I’d pretty much signed the Shelter contract, and then got an email saying, ‘Oh, we’d also like you to do a half-marathon’. I can’t say I enjoyed it. But it was leading from the front, I think they call it.”

I don’t entirely believe her. Dhivya O’Connor, former chief executive of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and creator of The Charity CEO Podcast, describes Ms Elliott as a “serious athlete” who once cycled 100km – further than London to Brighton – “just for fun”.

Outside work, Ms Elliott’s two boys – aged eight and 10 – keep her “very busy”, she says, and the family is active, with hobbies including skating, running and sea swimming, though there is less opportunity to do that now she lives in “landlocked Buckinghamshire”. 

She bonded with Ms O’Connor when they were both newly appointed interim CEOs – Ms Elliott at NCVO and Ms O’Connor at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising – with young children. And aside from her sporting prowess, Ms O’Connor says Ms Elliott is “hugely experienced in convening and leading change” at both a grassroots and a national level and will bring this sense of “purpose with action” to Shelter.

Era of execution

The Renters’ Rights Act comes into force in May and has been a major campaigning area for Shelter over the past six years. The charity has also long been banging the drum for more social housing to be built around the UK. 

The £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP), unveiled last spring, was described by the charity as a “watershed moment” and an opportunity to start a bold new chapter for housing.

But there are plenty of details to shake out, and of course, the funding won’t come close to delivering the annual 90,000 social homes a year Shelter is calling for. The SAHP has instead set a target of 180,000 social homes spread across a decade-long programme.

“I think we’re very pragmatic, and I think our role will need to evolve”

Ms Elliott sees her role as making sure that changes to renters’ rights and social housing commitments actually happen. “I’ve come in at a really exciting time, with these big wins in the sector. So I feel the real responsibility now is how we bank those and build on them,” she says.

“We need to work with councils, with housing associations, work with developers to make sure that the social homes actually do get built and get spades in the ground, which is a slightly different role.

“Similarly, with renters’ rights, how do we enforce rights in a context where local authorities are really, really short of resources? How do we work as a partner in that system to make these things a reality?”

Ms Elliott thinks there might be a need for Shelter to adopt new tactics. She describes her plans for the charity to take a “convening” role to get different parts of the industry around the table. “I think we’re very pragmatic, and I think our role will need to evolve.”

Ms Elliott has, for example, already had a “constructive meeting” with the chief executive of an association representing private landlords, where they discussed the impact of the upcoming changes to Section 21 notices.

Does this signal a less combative approach than her predecessor Baroness Neate, who became something of a thorn in the side of the private rented sector? During her tenure, Baroness Neate was outspoken in her criticism of private landlords, accusing them of getting away with “cutting corners” on housing conditions and, amid fears the Renters’ Rights Act would be watered down in 2024, accused the government of being “too cowardly to stand up to a small minority of landlord MPs”.