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Newly merged Housing Plus boss: ‘My aim is to build 1,000 homes a year’
Wayne Gethings, the boss of newly merged Housing Plus Group, tells James Riding about housing with care, regeneration and his vision for the West Midlands landlord
The boss of newly merged Housing Plus Group has told Inside Housing he wants to build 1,000 homes a year from 2026 #UKhousingThree weeks into his role as chief executive at Housing Plus, Wayne Gethings is feeling confident. He wants to build 1,000 homes a year from 2026, he tells Inside Housing, and take the newly merged 34,000-home organisation to “just shy of” 40,000 homes in five years.
It’s a significant step up, but Mr Gethings hopes to make the most of economies of scale and capitalise on an enlarged Affordable Homes Programme. Both predecessor organisations already “punched well above their weight”, he argues. “We are now a bigger player across the region,” he says.
The mix of tenures built by Housing Plus “will follow where we can get grant”, he says. “We will follow the government’s agenda, and I’d like to think that results in more social and affordable across our areas.”
Mr Gethings was previously chief executive of 14,000-home The Wrekin Housing Group, which merged with 19,000-home Housing Plus. Sarah Boden, chief executive of Housing Plus, retired after the merger.
After he left school, Mr Gethings spent a handful of years as a musician, until the record company he worked for went bust. He then joined the construction company where his father worked.
“I thought, ‘Well, it might fill the gap until I become a rock star,’” he says. He ended up working in refurbishment and regeneration for local authorities, before retraining and joining the stock transfer organisation The Wrekin Housing Trust in 2000. He still plays the guitar in his spare time at local gigs, but he has plenty keeping him busy at the moment.
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The merger
Inside Housing speaks to Mr Gethings 17 days into the new job, which he took up at the start of January, although he had been working on the merger for 18 months “in the background”.
Prior to the tie-up, the two West Midlands landlords were remarkably similar. In 2023-24, Wrekin delivered 316 homes and a £9.8m surplus, while Housing Plus built 179 homes and posted a £10.1m surplus. Both were rated G1 for governance and V2 for financial viability by the Regulator of Social Housing.
They operated across the same areas: Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, and Staffordshire. Mr Gethings recalls speaking to a tenant pre-merger who asked him: “Why are there two or three vans in my street from three different organisations, all come to mend taps?”
“I feel like I patrol the area now. I’ve got 60-70% of the affordable-social [housing] across those geographies”
“I thought, ‘This cannot be right. This cannot be the most efficient and effective way of delivering services,’” he says.
“I feel like I patrol the area now. I’ve got 60-70% of the affordable-social [housing] across those geographies. It puts us in a pretty good position in relation to working constructively with local authorities and also the devolved combined authorities,” he adds.
Shropshire is more rural and “peaceful”, he says, compared to Telford, a “modern new town” with a growing technology sector, and the traditional coal mining area of Staffordshire.
Both organisations operated housing with care: accommodation for older people with an on-site staff presence. This tenure made up around £20m and £23m of Wrekin’s and Housing Plus’ turnover respectively.
“Housing Plus was quite good at delivering that care service,” Mr Gethings says. “They had a skill set in-house that was from a medical background, whereas at Wrekin we always struggled to recruit people from a medical side.”
Pre-merger, Wrekin and Housing Plus both delivered repairs in house. The merger should allow Housing Plus’ care skill set to cover a much broader base, he says. Wrekin, meanwhile, can bring its “innovative” repairs service, with a target of same-day repairs, to Housing Plus.
National Insurance increase
Supported housing providers have warned that the forthcoming National Insurance rise leaves the sector in a perilous place. “I’ve got a £1.8m problem I didn’t have before,” Mr Gethings says of the tax hike, which is predominantly spread across lower-paid jobs in care.
“That does make it very difficult,” he says. “There’s a moral question now on whether the rent paid by people who just want to live in social and affordable housing should actually subsidise a service that the government should be providing.”
Mr Gethings sees a wider need for government to invest in the region, putting more resources into councils, police and communities. He adds: “A local authority with the money to be able to change the infrastructure, the facilities that go into an estate, complements what I do.”
“There’s a moral question now on whether the rent paid by people who just want to live in social and affordable housing should actually subsidise a service that the government should be providing”
Mr Gethings is not opposed to selling off “old, cold” homes that are coming to the end of their life. “Maybe that would be suited to somebody in homeownership… who would take the time and do it up over years,” he says. “Whereas for us, it’s got to be decent now, it’s got to be warm now, it’s got to actually be cheap for a person to live in.”
Both legacy organisations, Housing Plus and Wrekin, made use of government retrofit funding. The newly merged association is perched on the Welsh border. He notes: “Wales gobbles up all the skill because they’re willing to issue contracts longer term… It’s the skill base that will restrict me in that area.”
In five years’ time, he says, he wants to improve “every single service we deliver”, know the organisation’s geography “better than anybody else”, make the housing association more resilient and a “great place to train and develop people”.
“I want people across the whole of the sector to say, ‘My God, if you want a career in housing, get yourself over to Housing Plus Group.’”
Recent longform articles by James Riding
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