The 35,000-home housing association has promoted Sayeed Harris to the role

Midland Heart has selected Sayeed Harris to head up its property services directorate, as the executive director of property services.

Sayeed Harris

Source: Midland Heart

Sayeed Harris has been appointed as Midland Heart’s new executive director of property services

Harris joined the 34,000-home association in 2020 as director of commercial finance. In this position, he worked with colleagues across operations to help Midland Heart “deliver great services whilst remaining financially sound”.

In his new position landlord has said that Harris will be “responsible for ensuring it maintains building safety compliance standards and delivers a first-class repairs and maintenance service which is responsive to tenants’ needs.”

In addition, Midland Heart has said Harris will oversee investment in delivering high-quality, energy-efficient homes.

He will work alongside David Taylor, executive director of tenancy services “to ensure the needs of tenants are met and that satisfaction with our services remains high”.

Midland Heart said it created dedicated tenancy and property directorates as “making sure our tenants and homes have dedicated senior oversight is more critical now than ever before”.

Before joining Midland Heart, Harris held the position of head of business planning at Bromford Housing and spent over six years in management roles at KPMG.

>> See also: Clarion chooses ex-EY partner as new board chair

>> See also: Places for People hires permanent chief risk officer

In February, £220m-turnover Midland Heart suspended its chair Lord Ian Austin for posting a controversial tweet about Hamas on X.

The post from the former Labour minister read: “Everyone, better safe than sorry: before you go to bed, nip down and check you haven’t inadvertently got a death cult of Islamist murderers and rapists running their operations downstairs. It’s easily done.”

The post, which attracted criticism on social media, was subsequently deleted.

In March, Austin resigned from the position

Midland Heart in August said the organisation was on track to hit its goal of building or acquiring 4,000 homes by 2025 despite a fall in annual completions last year.

The 34,000-home association said it built 651 homes in 2022/23, down 8% on the 700 it completed the previous year.