One Housing CEO takes top job at BPHA

Housing association BPHA has poached One Housing chief executive Richard Hill to be its new CEO. 

Hill will take over in May at the 19,500-home, Bedford-based housing association from current chief executive Kevin Bolt, who is retiring. 

BPHA’s incoming boss has been chief executive of One Housing for five-and-a-half years. His departure follows One’s merger into 58,000-home Riverside in December 2021, which saw One become a subsidiary of the Riverside Group.

Hill has had leadership roles in housing for nearly 20 years. Before joining 17,000-home One Housing he was chief executive at Spectrum Housing. 

He held senior leadership positions before that at the Homes and Communities Agency and the Housing Corporation. He is also the non-executive chair of drugs and alcohol rehabilitation charity Phoenix Futures and the vice chair of the G15 group of housing associations.

Paul Leinster, chair of BPHA, which abandoned three-way merger talks with Flagship and Futures in April, said: “[Hill] brings extensive knowledge of the sector and is ideally placed to build on the excellent nine-year tenure of our retiring CEO, Kevin Bolt, in leading a successful organisation that is proud to be driven by its social purpose. Richard shares the desire of the BPHA team to provide excellent, value for money services for our customers, and maintain and develop affordable, energy efficient, sustainable housing into the future.”

Hill added: “I am excited and feel privileged to lead BPHA, an excellent organisation that is clearly driven by its core values and social mission.”

Bolt said he expected BPHA to go ”from strength to strength under [Hill’s] leadership.”

One Housing had made a loss of £26m in the year prior to its merger with Riverside. Riverside was recently one of six housing associations to have its finances downgraded by ratings agency Moodys, reflecting an “increased risk profile and weakened credit metrics”.