About Us

We’re a lively, innovative and growing social business, providing more than 10,000 homes and neighbourhood services across the East Midlands covering a patch stretching from Derbyshire to West Northamptonshire. Our vision is ‘Providing quality homes and services for better futures’.

We jointly own and operate Access Training, which boosts people’s skills, employability and opportunities across the region. We believe in supporting and developing our teams and are proud holders of Platinum Investors in People accreditation.

Futures was formed over fifteen years ago through the merger of two registered providers of social housing – Amber Valley Housing Limited and Daventry and District Housing Limited. The first of these was set up in 2002 so our origins go back more than 20 years. We were set up to provide high quality, safe and secure homes and excellent local neighbourhoods and services that make a real difference to the communities we serve. We are still doing this today. Right from the start, we’ve understood the importance of offering much more than homes. We have pioneered an impressive range of services and support for customers that cover employment, learning, health, community development, money advice and digital inclusion.

Our values are at the core of everything we do and form the foundation for the behaviours we expect our team members to adopt in their work. We updated our values in 2023 based on feedback from across the organisation and reflecting our journey forwards.

Our new FACTS values are: Flexible, Accountable, Customer-centric, Trusting and Supportive.

As a central part of delivering against the current corporate plan we are continuing to transform our services to make them effortless for our customers. With a diverse asset base, highly satisfied customers (with sector-leading metrics) and a very healthy financial position, we’re determined to continue our achievements to be a sector-leading housing provider in all respects. We want to develop new and efficient services, homes with imagination and flair as well as being  even more of a leading force in housing people across the East Midlands. To find out more about us, please visit www.futureshg.co.uk

Governance

Below you will find information on the Group’s structure along with a brief insight into who currently makes up the Board.

Group structure

Mike Stevenson: Group Chair

Mike has more than 30 years’ commercial banking experience and 13 years as a Board member. He has specialised in the social housing, further and higher education, local government and large charity sectors. He has also worked as a senior member of the credit risk management team in a large commercial bank.

Ray Harding: Board Director and Chair of the Group Audit & Risk Committee

Ray is a Chartered Accountant with extensive managerial experience in diverse sectors and in many countries, he is also the trustee of a Tanzanian charity. He believes that housing is the most important area of public policy and hopes to contribute by giving an independent view to the Group’s governance.

David Brooks: Board Director

David has a commercial background predominantly in the food industry where he spent 20 years in senior executive roles. He has undertaken a range of non-executive activity since 2008 and on the 1 April 2021 was appointed to the Seafish Board.

He is currently on the Boards of the Food Standards Agency, the Publica Group, and an NHS out-of-hours service. He is also an advisor to two food businesses and now has significant experience of working with various Boards in various sectors.

His interests lie in delivering strong growth and change programmes using his general business and financial management experience.

Tim Slater: Board Director

Tim has held senior roles in both the public and private sector, particularly in IT leadership and programme management. He spent a year lecturing at the University of Derby’s Business School, and more recently gained a master’s in finance and accounting at Nottingham Trent University. He is a Fellow of the British Computing Society, a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority. He is also a Non-Executive Director at the UK Supreme Court.

Tim lives locally in the Belper area and is keen to contribute his experience and knowledge from outside the Social Housing sector to Futures Housing Group.

Lindsey Williams: Board Director

Lindsey sits on the Board in her capacity as Chief Executive of Futures Housing Group.

Ciara McMillan: Board Director and Chair of the Customer Insight Committee

Ciara has many years of experience working in the housing sector, most recently as an Account Director for Crimson supporting housing associations and local authorities to evolve, grow and digitalise using technology to enable transformational change.

Before this she worked for housing associations, leading neighbourhood management and community engagement services.

Sam Veal, Board Director, Chair of the Board of Futures Living Ltd and Chair of the Asset Investment Committee

Appointed to the Asset Investment Committee in 2020, Sam is a chartered surveyor with over 30 years’ experience in the field of development, asset management and new business working in both the profit for purpose and private sectors. An experienced organisational leader and property professional, Sam is Chief Executive of a regional regeneration specialist and has non-executive experience in special education, student accommodation partnerships and supported living. Sam is also a board member of Futures Living Ltd, the Group’s property development company.

Peter Burke, Board Director, member of the Board of Futures Living Ltd and member of the Asset Investment Committee

Peter is a NED for the Trafford Housing Trust, having previously worked as a commercial director for Bloor Homes in the South Midlands and before that, a number of other large well-known development companies. He is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Building and has worked with a range of housing associations for many years. He is keen to maintain his strategic involvement in contributing to solving the lack of affordable homes.

Laurice Ponting, Board Director

Laurice has significant experience of corporate and strategic leadership, property development and customer focused service delivery in the social housing sector having worked with large metropolitan councils, housing associations and commercial businesses. She also chairs and is trustee of a large national charity.”

Jackie Perry, Board Director and member of the Insight Committee

Jackie cares about delivering great services that make a real difference to people and places, with a strong commitment to ensuring the residents’ voice matters and is truly embedded within an organisation’s culture. She joined Futures as our first trainee board member in 2021 and was appointed to the Board and Insight Committee in 2023.

Jackie has 25 years’ experience in the social housing sector, more recently as the Executive Director – Customer Experience at Muir Group Housing Association where she leads on consumer regulation compliance, customer communications and engagement, customer experience, housing services and supported housing. She is a qualified housing professional, a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing, as well as a qualified Executive Coach and Mentor.

Pauline Davis, Senior Independent Director and Vice Chair

Pauline brings over 30 years’ experience in Housing, health, regeneration, and education, as well as a passion for place shaping and working with local communities. She retired from her role as Deputy Chief Executive and Corporate Direction of Economic Development and Regeneration at Hull City Council in 2014, having worked previously in Nottingham and Liverpool for the NHS and Local Government.

She has led multi-million-pound projects and programmes such as Housing Market Renewal, Building Schools for the Future and Economic Development.

Pauline is currently Independent Chair at Efficiency North Holdings Ltd, Vice Chair of The Riverside Housing Group (until October 2023) and Senior Independent Director at DHU NHS Ltd who provide NHS 111 and Urgent and Emergency Care across the East and West Midlands.

Pauline holds a master’s degree in public health and is an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health.

Jonathan Bemrose, Independent Member of the Group Audit & Risk committee

Jonathan is an experienced Board member with a financial background in healthcare and social care settings, including the NHS. He is currently Finance Director for a growing healthcare company, Pop, which runs GP practices and provides a range of community health services across Nottinghamshire. Previously he held roles as Chief Finance Officer of four statutory organisations with a total turnover of more than £1bn.

Joshua Imuere, Trainee Board member

Joshua brings over 20 years’ experience in health and social care, across public and charity sectors. He has successfully led several charities to maturity and expansion of impact, as well as working and overseeing transformation programmes around mental health and domestic abuse. Initially trained as a teacher, he has a master’s degree in educational policy and is a chartered management institute fellow. Currently he is Deputy Chief executive of a housing charity and is also a NED for the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust.

He lives locally and is committed to using his skills and experience strategically in providing affordable housing and particularly amplifying the voice and expertise of underrepresented groups.