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Riverside CEO Paul Dolan on his plan to build ‘something positive’ after cancer and hopes of gaining a C1 grade
Paul Dolan had to partially step back as chief executive of Riverside after finding out he had bowel cancer only two weeks into the job. Today, he is launching a year-long fundraising campaign to raise money for a children’s cancer charity with a housing angle. Jess McCabe reports
Riverside chief executive Paul Dolan on plan to build ‘something positive’ after cancer and hopes to gain a C1 grade #UKhousingPaul Dolan had to partially step back as chief executive of Riverside after finding out he had bowel cancer. Today, he is launching a fundraising campaign. Jess McCabe reports #UKhousingIt was only two weeks after Paul Dolan started as chief executive of Riverside in 2024 that he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Now he is launching a charity “cook-off” to raise money for a charity that supports the families of children going through cancer treatment.
Inside Housing has come to meet Mr Dolan to find out more about the fundraiser and how it combines with his passion for cooking. And the conversation goes much further: his hopes of Riverside achieving a top C1 grade under the regulator’s consumer standards, the landlord’s efforts to engage with Reform UK, development targets and artificial intelligence (AI).
The interview was meant to be paired with a site visit at one of Riverside’s regeneration projects – an apartment block around the corner from Canary Wharf – but Mr Dolan missed the tour because the doors on his train wouldn’t open.
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When Inside Housing catches up with him in the prefab site office, the chief executive is joking with some Riverside staff about missing the tour on purpose because of his fear of heights. We had gone up in a hoist lift to level 31 of 32, which provides great views of the Thames, but with the building’s facade not yet finished, it is rather open to the elements.
Mr Dolan pauses to explain that when he was a “naive apprentice” working at an opencast coal mine, he was hoisted up on a girder on a pallet and “my foot went through the pallet, so ever since I’ve never been that keen on heights”.
Mr Dolan has so many stories, it is hard to pick which ones to include in this piece. However, the most immediate topic of the day is the new Cook-off for Cancer campaign that Mr Dolan is launching today. This is a year-long effort to raise money for a charity called Young Lives vs Cancer, which provides a small number of homes free of charge to allow families to stay close to hospital while their children are going through cancer treatment.
The cooking angle might seem out of the blue, but back in 2002, Mr Dolan took a year out of housing to work with chef Raymond Blanc at Michelin-starred restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. “I love cooking – I do a decent dinner party,” Mr Dolan says. “I’m combining both the cooking bit with something positive coming out of the cancer.”
He aims to get some celebrity chefs involved in the cook-offs, along with housing chief executives, as part of the fundraising activities. Mr Blanc has confirmed his support for the fundraiser, and at the time of our interview, Mr Dolan was planning to write to another 30 celebrity chefs to get them involved.
Mr Dolan’s first job also had a culinary connection, at pretty much the opposite end of cooking to a Michelin-starred restaurant – “making Yorkshire puddings for Aunt Bessie’s on the night shift in Leeds”.
“My background is one of bombing at school,” Mr Dolan says. When he was at the Yorkshire pudding factory, he realised he needed to build a career and, based on an interest in property, he hit on the idea of becoming a surveyor.
“I went back and did some A-Levels,” he says – describing himself as “misdirected” at school. Then he went on to study housing at Sheffield Hallam University and there “I found out my real passion is around people”.
From Yorkshire puddings to housing
“That first job was at [housing association] Sanctuary and [I] progressed quite quickly in the career,” Mr Dolan explains. “I got into housing officer, senior housing officer, housing manager and then into director positions fairly rapidly.”
One of those early jobs was at Riverside, working through an agency as a housing officer in Toxteth and Smithdown Road in Liverpool, meaning he has “come full circle” to return to the organisation as chief executive. Riverside is Mr Dolan’s fourth job as chief executive of a housing association.
The first was in 2010, when he was brought in as interim chief executive at the struggling Sadeh Lok Housing Group. This organisation was created in 1988 to house Black and minority ethnic people in Kirklees. By 2010, the association was in trouble. “We were in financial failure, it was quite stark,” Mr Dolan recollects. “Governance was a real mess.”
Within a few months, ‘interim’ was dropped from the title and he was made permanent. “That was a G3/V3 organisation at that point and we got it back to G1/V1 in 18 months,” he says, taking Sadeh Lok from non-compliant to the top governance and financial viability grades.
In 2013, Mr Dolan left to head up Johnnie Johnson Housing, a housing association set up by an RAF veteran. It was also in trouble. “I was quite nervous, should we say, about where Johnnie Johnson was financially,” he says.
In his first or second week on the job, he got a call from the English regulator. He recalls being told: “I’m really sorry. You know [Johnnie Johnson is] a G3, it’s going to be V3 as well.”
“We did some evaluation pretty quick, got some new minds in, and we knew we could work through the pressing financial issues. But the regulator, I think, felt under pressure at that point,” Mr Dolan says. This was immediately after the high-profile collapse of Cosmopolitan Housing Association, which was rescued by a merger with Sanctuary. The case led to significant scrutiny of the financial stability of the housing association sector.
“I remember watching on TV the parliamentary select committee – Clive Betts interviewing Julian Ashby [then chair of the Regulator of Social Housing]. And the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘So Mr Ashby, I hear, once again, things are interesting in the housing sector,’ or something like that. ‘Tell us about the case of Johnnie Johnson.’ And I just thought, ‘Oh my God,’” he laughs. He adds: “But, again, we got it sorted.”
Within about two years, Johnnie Johnson was back to G1/V1. “I always used to be able to say to investors… we were the only housing association that had a V3 rating that retained independence. And it did sustain that for seven years,” he says, as well as praising Yvonne Castle who followed him as chief executive.
“That was a G3/V3 organisation at that point and we got it back to G1/V1 in 18 months”
Johnnie Johnson did eventually merge with Sanctuary years later, but Mr Dolan notes: “My objective with Johnnie Johnson was always to put [it] in charge of its destiny.” He wanted to take away the external pressure to make decisions about its future, which might result in an outcome that was not in the best interests of its residents and customers.
In the meantime, Mr Dolan had moved into his third chief executive role – leading Accent. When he joined in May 2017, it was his first time starting in the top job at an association that was not in financial or regulatory trouble.
His achievements at that job still stacked up, including the association’s first-ever foray into the capital markets for funding, which raised £350m at what was then an extremely favourable 2.6% interest rate.
“Development was a big area that we really advanced in Accent,” he says. “So it was doing 50, 60 homes a year. It’s now doing 300 to 500 a year – real quality, strategically targeted in Cambridge and Peterborough.” He gives a shout-out to Sarah Ireland here, who came in as development director and “just transformed” Accent’s approach to housebuilding.
When the top job at Riverside became available, Mr Dolan remembers talking about it with a high-profile sector figure he does not want to name, who called it “one of the best, probably the toughest jobs in the sector”.
Some of those challenges related to Riverside’s 2021 merger with One Housing. Around the time that former chief executive Carol Matthews left, Riverside reported a 38% drop in surplus, which left the association in a deficit. Ms Matthews cited continuing financial issues from One Housing’s former stock, including from high-rise buildings that needed fire remediation work.
At the time of the job being advertised, Mr Dolan was happy at Accent, but told himself: “If I’m approached for it, I’ll consider it. If I’m not, [it is] not meant to be. And while I was on holiday, [I] got an email through from recruiters to say there’s this opportunity.”
Personal challenge
Mr Dolan was attracted to the “challenge” posed by leading Riverside. Two weeks into the new job, however, he found out he was going to have to deal with a much more personal challenge.
He was out on a meet and greet with staff, and his phone kept ringing. “Somebody was frantically ringing me from a Barnsley number three times,” he says.
The news on the other line was that a medical test had found an abnormality and he needed to come in. “I get the call – being told you need to come in and have a full examination. And from there, boom, bowel cancer.”
More than a year later, Mr Dolan has been through treatment and given the all-clear. “It was quite another sharp introduction [to the job]. One of the executives said to me a number of months ago, ‘Paul, you know, that’s telling you, don’t start another job.’”
“It was a bit of a shock to the system,” he says, with some significant understatement. “Within six or seven weeks, [I had] the seven-hour surgery and then preventive chemo. It was curative surgery, I feel fortunate with that.”
He observes: “One of the things I didn’t realise fully was, until they get the tumour out of you, so they get it on the microscope and do the diagnosis on that, they can’t exactly tell you what the stage is and where you were at. So I had a good outcome to that and just took a step at a time.”
Mr Dolan worked throughout most of this treatment period. “People said, ‘Oh, when did you come back?’ I never really left,” he says with a laugh.
Before he went for the surgery, Mr Dolan had already made a number of changes to the executive team, committee structures and governance.
“There were really low moments that people who have experienced cancer will have had, but I took it really, really pragmatically”
After the surgery, he had a preventative course of chemo for 12 weeks, which he describes as the “hardest bit”. “With that, [I] took it really strictly”; because of the risk of infection, he could not be out and about at work events.
“The infusion was two drugs, and the infusion just knocks you,” he explains. “So after you’d had that, which was every three weeks, for the first two days – so I had it on Friday, Monday, Tuesday – I’d be pretty much wiped out. But after that, you pick stuff up.”
In the middle of all this, he set in motion a new five-year strategy for Riverside. Shortly after his operation, he told the executive team: “I don’t want you to think I’ve had too much anaesthetic, but [I’ve been thinking] about this strategy we need to deploy and simplifying what we’ve got so people understand it.”
That strategy went on to be developed after consultation with staff, residents and other stakeholders. He tasked the team with working out Riverside’s version of the top billing at Glastonbury. “I said, ‘Who’s Arctic Monkeys on the Friday night? Who’s the Coldplay slot on Saturday? And who was doing the Dolly Parton ‘legend’ slot on Sunday?’” The headline acts ended up being “homes, customer, people”.
Mr Dolan kept a video diary during this time, and he has included some excerpts in the launch of the Cook-off for Charity campaign (see below), and shared some raw moments. Now he is most keen to talk about the work he is continuing to do.
“[I was] attending meetings virtually, and board sessions, strategy sessions, and we set a new strategy in that time for the organisation,” he says. “The team was brilliant. The board was fantastic, incredibly supportive. You see the values [of the organisation]. It wasn’t just because I was chief executive. I’ve seen that subsequently. It is a really, really great organisation.”
Did he not consider taking a break from work?
“You never know how this is going to turn out, and there were really low moments that people who have experienced cancer will have had, but I took it really, really pragmatically,” Mr Dolan says. “I have an amazing family, and that is such an important fact. And I think [some] people don’t have that.”
Alongside the support of his wife and two teenage children, he was also driven by a belief in the importance of the work. “We’ve got so many committed colleagues. And you’ve got so many people out there that need… that bit of extra support that we provide through our care and support service, or, just like you’ve seen today, a fantastic new, affordable home that is cheap to heat and is safe and secure. So it’s a really important thing that we do.”
Development and TSM goals
Now that Mr Dolan is fully recovered, his ambitions are high.
“We are a big national and we’ve got to play our part in new supply and regeneration,” Mr Dolan says. “We’ll develop, on average, 1,000 homes-plus a year over 10 years.” This includes, he says, eight major regeneration projects in London and an £80m regeneration in Runcorn.
Riverside’s overall tenant satisfaction measure (TSM) score is 65.7%, which is not bad for a 75,000-home landlord. But Mr Dolan wants this score to be “in the 80s”. He adds: “It’s going to be tough. The most important thing is incremental progression.” The landlord’s TSM scores have already begun to improve year on year, he notes.
Riverside still has a couple of years until it will be inspected by the regulator for the first time under the consumer standards, but Mr Dolan says: “I want us to have a C1 rating. We’ve got to strive for that.”
“We’ve got work to do. There’s no doubt about that, to hit that [C1 grade] and to get the consistency of service delivery”
The landlord is starting from a “reasonable position” he says, but he acknowledges: “We’ve got work to do. There’s no doubt about that, to hit that and to get the consistency of service delivery.”
Part of this involves addressing damp and mould and the condition of existing properties. “Riverside will have properties that are not in the condition we want to see. And it’s about us being informed about that and understanding where that exists,” Mr Dolan states.
To help drive this change, Riverside recently hired Liz Fairburn to be chief customer officer. Ms Fairburn came to the job after 20 years at insurer Direct Line Group and having been customer experience director at the Department for Work and Pensions. “She’s already making a real, real positive difference and challenging us as an organisation, as a team,” Mr Dolan observes.
Is some of this challenge still a legacy of the merger with One Housing? Mr Dolan does not dispute there was an impact, but Riverside is now one organisation. “We’re not pointing down the M1 and up the M1 at each other,” he says. “We’re in it together now.”
This “in it together” approach seems to link back to Mr Dolan’s choice of charity and his desire to use his influence to raise money for Young Lives vs Cancer. “We want to get some fun in it as well, in what is a really serious cause,” he says.
Paul Dolan on…
Rent convergence
Mr Dolan expects rent convergence to have a “modest” impact on Riverside. “Yes, it would increase capacity, but it wasn’t a sudden game-changer that we’d suddenly be able to totally rip up the existing business plan and be really aggressive in terms of development and investment.”
The government’s 1.5 million homes target
Current statistics on the number of homes being started on site are “not the level to deliver that kind of target,” he says. “Equally, we have a housing crisis, and it’s good that we see the government being ambitious around that.”
The rise of Reform
“We had two visits lined up for the [regeneration] scheme in Runcorn with Sarah Pochin [the area’s Reform MP]. Unfortunately, she cancelled last minute. But we’re going to continue inviting her,” Mr Dolan says.
“We’ve got to challenge where we think things are not in line with our values,” he says. “But also how can we help shape thinking around housing policy?”
AI
“I’ve got to admit, I’m not the most digitally enabled chief executive in the sector,” Mr Dolan says, but Riverside is “tentatively approaching” AI and he sees the potential for it as “significant” behind the scenes. But, he says, AI cannot replace the interpersonal skills essential to housing management.
Recently Riverside played a video demonstration to residents involved in a strategy session – a pitch the association had received around a robot-style AI assistant – and you could “see them recoil” from the video, he says.
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