CIPFA Housing Network (CHN)

Louise began her career as an academic teaching across a broad spectrum of political sciences and philosophy. Her research was mainly focused upon the nature of power in local and central government administrations. After ten years of lecturing and study, she moved into the real world and took up a post with the London Borough of Lewisham where she worked on CCT for the Environment Directorate, both as client - producing the first CCT Specifications for the Borough, and later as the Head of Contracts management for the DLO. In 1998 she was promoted to Head of Programme Management, and during this time designed the first local government orientated project & programme management methodology. Her portfolio covered projects and programmes with a value exceeding £210 millions.

For the past six years, Louise has worked for the commercial arm of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance as a senior advisor and consultant to a wide range of public sector organisations. Her areas of expertise include Social Housing, Programme and Project Management; Risk Management; Regeneration Programmes; Social Housing Finance; Inspection and Assessment; Quality Management; Business Planning; Performance Management, Value for Money and Efficiency, and Social Housing Procurement and Partnering.

Louise is the Manager of the CIPFA Housing Advisory Network which provides technical and specialist advice to Social Housing organisations across the UK. During her time with CIPFA she has written and published more than 25 Social Housing Management Guides.

07767 865 614 | Louise.Dunne@cipfa.org.uk

Professional Qualifications
CPFA 1996, AAT 1992 Postgraduate Certificate in Education 1972

Employment
Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). July 2000 to present.
Finance and Policy Manager, Local Government. Responsibilities include providing technical advice and developing responses to legislation and consultations issued by central government. Specialist in the areas of local government housing and education.

Publications
"The Outlook for Business in 2010" (with C Hughes). Pub. Management Consultancies Association 1998. (Short-listed for Guardian Business Insight Award)

Articles on Housing Finance, public sector finance etc published in professional journals, eg Housing Today, Local Government Chronicle, Property People

John is a graduate in Modern History from Durham University and a qualified CIPFA accountant. He commenced his career in local government in 1972. He became involved in housing in 1977 and so now has the dubious distinction of “celebrating” over 30 years in housing finance, first at Kirklees, then East Hampshire and finally for many years at Tower Hamlets where he was ultimately head of Housing Finance, responsible for housing benefits and leaseholder services, in addition to housing finance. In 2005 he decided on a career change and left Tower Hamlets. He has worked freelance, at Havering, then at CityWest Homes, the ALMO set up by Westminster City Council, and currently at Redbridge Council where, although he has involvement in the HRA, is concentrating mainly on homelessness issues. He has also been involved with work for CIPFA’s Housing and Local Authority Accounting Panels over the years and is an associate with CIPFA Commercial through which he has done a number of masterclasses on various aspects of housing finance and supporting people. He is involved in the Government review of housing finance, being a member of the CLG workstream which is reviewing the HRA. His main outside interest is keeping fit through doing triathlons and half marathons. He also grows vegetables in a part of the garden.

Louisa joined Incommunities (formerly Bradford Community Housing Trust) as an Area Finance Manager in 2004. She was keen to broaden her housing experience and a role within a large new LSVT presented the perfect opportunity. In August 2005 she was promoted to Head of Financial Services, and in December 2007 took over as Director of Finance. She moved on to become Executive Director of Finance at Aldwyck Housing Group in May 2010, where she stayed until September 2011.

In April 2008 Louisa was selected by CIPFA and Public Finance magazine as one of 10 Future Leaders. In November 2009 she was a finalist at the Women of the Future Awards in the Professional category.

Louisa has been an Associate to the CIPFA Housing Advisory Network since April 2006. She became an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing (ACIH) in March 2007.

Mr Robin Deane is the Performance Director at 10066 Housing Association, part of the Amicus Horizon Group.

His particular specialism as Associate to the CIPFA HAN derives from his skill and expertise in implementing Value for Money across organisations and has successfully engaged local tenants and residents in using the VfM agenda as a way of assessing the performance of key services such as repairs and maintenance, and homelessness.

Pascale Mézac started trading as Plan2moro in 2008, following an extensive career at senior management level in housing, local government and the NHS. She now works with teams to develop their skills and knowledge of RSL finance, reorganising processes and creating efficiencies; she has written financial regulations and housing schemes remodeling guidance and regularly advices professional firms to write up tenders.

Until 2008, she headed Finance at Westlea Housing Association; she was business development manager and assistant director of resources at Leeds Health Authority and headed student grants and environment urban programmes at Bradford Council. For the past 20 years, she has brought multi disciplinary teams together to deliver capital projects. She allies strong interpersonal and technical skills with excellent project and organisation management abilities. She particularly excels at business planning, process re-engineering, financial modelling, finance training and team building.

She developed a PFI in Primary Care guidance with NHS Estates and has translated local government policies into plain English. She is a keen advocate of social enterprise and supports local charities with their business planning.

She is a fellow chartered certified accountant (FCCA), a qualified Prince2 project practitioner and has a post graduate certificate in health economics. She has a national profile with both the National Housing Federation (past chair of the South West Finance Group) and CIPFA with current membership on the RSL panel.

Simon Jones works as an HRA accountant at Tandridge District Council, which he joined in 2004. He is a fully qualified CIPFA Accountant, gaining his letters in 2009. In previous roles he has worked for the London Borough of Camden and Thames Water.

Simon is our Junior Associate at CIPFA HAN, responsible for writing the monthly blog – Simon’s open and honest tales of an everyday HRA accountant have proved very popular with our Members, and the HRA Blog regularly tops the most hits list on our web-site

Ian is CIPFA’s lead advisor on transformation. He is currently working with public sector organisations to identify and deliver cash savings from new or existing change programmes.

Ian has worked in public finance for over 27 years with the majority of his career spent at Stoke-on-Trent City Council. He was instrumental in planning Stoke’s transition to a unitary authority from a district Council and was Director of Finance and Director of Resources at Stoke through a period of constitutional reform where he held the unique position of being to the only Finance Director in the UK to also be a member of the Council Executive.

More recently he has held the post of Director of Finance at Milton Keynes Council where he worked with a strategic partner in delivering the majority of finance based services.

Ian has been a senior member of project and programme management boards for a number of years including the delivery of two major PFI projects (one jointly with Health) together with School building and Housing Market Renewal programmes. He has led in house projects to deliver cash savings and service improvements through integrated IT systems and corporate property reviews.

ian.frost@cipfa.org.uk

Bill is currently a Director of i.s.4 housing & regeneration ltd, a specialist housing consultancy providing both financial and general housing expertise to organisations providing affordable housing across the UK. Bill’s current interests include long term financial business planning, component accounting implementation and HRA reform.

Bill is also heavily involved in a very practical way with social enterprise; he is one of the founding members of River Bain Hydro Ltd, a community owned hydro-electric scheme based in The Yorkshire Dales. The company has successfully built a 45Kwh generating plant, raising £450k of finance through a public share issue, bank loans and grants. The surplus from the scheme will be used to fund an environmental charity in the Dales. Bill’s role has included all aspects of the financial management of the project and investor relationship management.