Meet the Management Team

Gavin Cansfield, Chief Executive

With a background in housing, regeneration and homelessness, Gavin has worked for a number of housing associations in the West Midlands and London. Gavin joined as Chief Executive in November 2008 having worked at Hanover Housing for four years, Southern Housing Group, Focus [now Midland Heart], Shape and managed a New Deal for Communities pathfinder. He has an MBA from Warwick Business School.

Barbara Brownlee, Director of Housing and Customer Services

Barbara’s career started with Lewisham Council, where she was a Housing Advisor providing homeless advice and support. She moved to Haringey Council, where she worked with private sector tenants and landlords to improve and adapt their properties and on to Hackney where she developed neighbourhood services and ran Estate Regeneration for the Borough. This was followed by eight years in the private sector delivering service improvements for a number of housing organisations in the South East.

Sayeed Kadir, Director of Asset Management

Sayeed’s career started with Birmingham City Council, where he was a trainee Building Control Officer. A few years later he moved into housing and joined London Borough of Newham in 1985 where he stayed for almost ten years. Sayeed then joined East Thames Housing Group as Head of Property Services where he managed the maintenance and property management service including an internal direct labour organisation (DLO).

He then moved to Hounslow Homes, his first ALMO, where he successfully delivered a number of programmes and re-structured some of the schemes attracting extra funding. Sayeed joined us from Newham Homes where he was Director of Property and Asset Management.

Les Warren, Director of Finance and Resources

Les started his career with Deloitte. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant he then moved into industry working for one of his former audit clients  - a publicly listed property and housebuilding company. After a short spell working abroad, he moved back to London and took up a consultancy role with the London Borough of Camden, advising and leading upon various transformation projects in the borough's housing department.  In 2004, Les joined  London Borough of Lambeth to design, develop and implement a debt management strategy - a key Council priority at the time. He was later appointed head of finance and in late 2007 was seconded to establish Lambeth's ALMO, Lambeth Living. Les joins us from Lambeth Living where he was interim Director of Resources.

Jamie Carswell, Director of Strategy and Performance

Jamie joins Tower Hamlets Homes from Hackney, where he was Deputy Executive Mayor, having had a leading role in strategic housing, performance management, communications and forming local strategic partnerships. He has worked in housing for 9 years, and has been involved throughout in corporate governance, regeneration and the relationships with tenants and residents; previously he worked in the NHS.

Jamie manages performance improvement and resident engagement across Tower Hamlets Homes, and oversees our governance arrangements, such as the Board and its sub-committees. His directorate also handles all communications with residents and staff and will be aiming to improve responses to members and residents’ complaints.