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Former Places for People boss joins property investment giant
The former chief executive of one of the country’s largest housing providers is joining residential investor Regis Group as a senior strategic advisor.
David Cowans is joining the property investment giant to provide strategic advice on its new initiatives, with a particular focus on affordable housing.
The move comes after Mr Cowans announced in April last year that he would be retiring from Places for People (PfP) after 24 years in post.
In his new role, Mr Cowans will work with Regis’ team of industry and sector experts to identify and foster new ideas which have the potential to match the residential investor’s platforms.
He said: “The challenges to increasing housing supply are evident everywhere, and I am delighted to be advising the team to identify new ways to channel investment into housing and to deliver much-needed new solutions to increase supply, drive up customer standards and provide greater choice.”
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Nick Gould, founder and executive chair of Regis, said the former PfP chief was “uniquely qualified” to support the company over the coming years.
He added: “David’s appointment reflects our desire to continue to develop new ESG [environmental, social and governance]-oriented real estate platforms. David has a record of delivering commercially with substantial social impact and challenging the status quo. This experience reflects our own track record of value creation in non-traditional real estate asset classes.”
Mr Cowns was replaced at PfP by Greg Reed, a former executive at the Bank of America and chief of HomeServe UK .
The landlord has grown substantially under Mr Cowans’ leadership and diversified into financial services and leisure centres.
PfP currently owns around 69,000 homes across England and Scotland and manages more than 209,000 between the group’s 20 companies.
It completed 2,680 new homes in 2019-20, more than any other housing association in the UK, and made a £95.5m pre-tax surplus off a £866.7m turnover.
Mr Cowans has been the highest paid person in the social housing sector for several years, with his total salary, including a bonus, topping £574,000 in 2017-18 and 2018-19.
He was ranked second highest paid in Inside Housing’s housing association chief executive salary survey for 2019-20 because PfP was not able to provide figures for his bonus.
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