OHG chief executive promises social care innovation

Mr Hill will begin in September, replacing previous chief executive Mick Sweeney, who left the 15,000-home housing association earlier this year.

OHG announced a quadrupling of its retirement housing output last year, with a £150m drive into developing multi-tenure housing for older people.

“If the election showed us anything, it’s the importance of getting social care right,” said Mr Hill.

“So we will be asking if we can go a bit further in terms in terms of innovating and responding to that crisis in London.”

OHG has one of the largest sales programmes relative to its size of any social landlord in the country – deriving more than 50% of turnover from first tranche shared ownership sales and market sales in 2015/16.

Credit agencies have warned landlords about over-exposure to the London sales market over the past year, and Mr Hill said the state of the market would determine OHG’s future plans.

“[OHG] has been doing housing for sale because [it wants] to keep funding affordable housing,” he said. “The size of the programme for sale depends quite a lot on the market over the next two or three years, so we will see how that goes.”

Mr Hill led 17,000-home Spectrum into a merger with larger organisation Sovereign which completed in November last year.

“If the election showed us anything, it’s the importance of getting social care right,” Richard Hill.

Asked whether he had any plans to lead OHG into a merger with another large London-based organisation, Mr Hill said it was “far too early” to comment.

He also said he hoped to return the organisation to a G1 rating for governance, after it was downgraded by the English social housing regulator to G2 in July last year due to its recording of some board and audit committee discussions and decisions.