In this episode of The People in Housing Podcast, we chat with Tony Clark, an experienced housing professional who has worked across both public and private sectors. Tony shares his perspective on what it’s really like to transition between the two, highlighting the key differences in pace, priorities, and working culture. He dives into topics like stakeholder expectations, innovation, resource management, and the evolving role of leadership in both sectors. Join us as we unpack the challenges and opportunities that come with crossing the public-private divide, and what professionals can learn from both sides of the housing industry.

So for the benefit of the audience, for those who don't know who you are, can you give us a quick introduction in terms of your current role and what you do within social housing?

Yes. So, I'm Tony Clark. I've been in the social housing sector since, dare I say it, 1981. So a long, long time now. July of last year, I took on the role as Midlands Regional Director for Seddon Construction Limited. We're a smaller region, staff wise compared to the North West, but we do oversee all main work streams that the business delivers. So, new build, planned, maintenance, decarbonization. So I have a team that looks after all of those.

How big is your operation within the region in terms of headcount?

At the moment we've got probably just short of 30 directly employed individuals in various roles. We are fairly autonomous as a region. We rely upon, our North West colleagues for estimating and bid writing and that kind of thing. But, we've got the front end of delivery.

So I've got Contracts Managers, I've got Partnerships Managers in terms of business development and we've got a commercial team there as well, for the financial side of things. Turnover currently is about £20 million, which is dwarfed by our North West colleagues. But with Seddon, they've been going 128 years and they are North West based. So they've got a real head start on the rest of us.

Ambition wise, the next three years we want to take 20 to at least 50. The Midlands and it's both East and West by the way, not just the West Midlands, which some people think it is. For me anyway, I think it's an untapped area for the business. I'm knocking on doors of people that I've known for a long time and, they think we do painting, which we do. But we do far more. They didn't know that, or “you're Novus”. We're not Novus. That's a different company entirely. So the first 6 to 12 months of my role is very much about, marketing, branding, awareness raising, and, delivering some work, but hopefully delivering it to the quality that we would need it to be and then people will pick up from there.

Cool. Obviously you've worked for a range of regional associations, that’ve got four or five thousand units. You've worked for national associations who are some of the biggest in the country. This podcast is going to be the first one of its kind in terms of someone who's transitioned from client side to the contracting side. So can you just talk us through that transition in terms of over the last 10 years. There's not many people that make that transition. Because obviously you’ve come from a housing background and then got into asset management. How has that helped you in the new role?

Yeah, I guess there's two main themes to that. So one is that you know. And you'll know yourself, Dal. As you get older and your career progresses, you move away from being a specialist in any particular field. You become more of a General Manager. Then your job becomes much more about relationships, vision, politics, budgets, finance, clearing the decks, as we talked about before, for other people to come along and to develop the team and so on. So that's been a big part of my last 15 years, is just getting from where I was, to where I am now.

I was an Exec Director at 34, so I've spent the last 25 years in senior roles. Although I'm not technically qualified in property, so I'm not a QS, I'm not a Building Surveyor. Right from very early on in my career, I've managed asset management teams, I've managed construction teams, I've managed a whole host of various services. But on the property side, I've managed a lot of the teams that are okay on the receiving end of contractor market, but with enough knowledge to know how to run a property service. So when I got the call last year, and I was looking to move on after five years with Orbit, it wouldn't have been my first choice in the sense that I'd not consciously gone out looking for it. And you'll hear the phrase time and time again, people fall into housing.

It almost feels like I've fallen into the contractor market. But when I sat down and I thought about what was on offer, housing associations, local authorities, are really under the Kosh these days. Huge amount of challenge. It just felt right. I wanted to do something on the other side and try and influence from the contractor perspective. And so far that's working really well.

And to delve deeper into that. At what point was it where you thought, I'm going to go to work for a big national contractor.

The last two years at Orbit, given that it is so many years that I've worked in the sector. It's probably the hardest couple of years in my career. You speak to anybody on the housing side and they'll probably say the same for those that have been around, 10, 20, 30 years. Huge amounts of pressure, in terms of the need for new homes, damp and mould. Sadly, the little boy that lost his life in Rochdale, regulatory pressures and suddenly it became a real cauldron of challenge. And part of the solution to some of those issues is about better collaboration with the contractor market. And it just felt right. Don't get me wrong, we generally have had good relationships with the contractor market for a number of years. I mean my eyes have been really open in that sort of six to eight months since I joined the business. I didn't just choose the contractor market. I have to be sort of careful here, I chose Seddon.

Not that I have anything about the other tier one players in the contractor market. But Seddon from a values perspective, because it's family owned, fourth generation, very strong values, very strong social value culture. Probably was about as close to a housing association as you can get in the way that, I've been used to things. We just felt the right fit.

Yeah, that makes sense. And obviously there’s pros and cons going to a big PLC business, and obviously pros and cons working for a very well-known brand. What's been the top two challenges? Where you’ve said “I didn't expect that coming, even though I've worked at a very senior exec level”. What's been the top two challenges that you faced?

I don't know whether they’re challenges, but things that have opened my eyes. I mean, jokingly, I've had to learn a whole new language. People talk about the housing world being full of acronyms and, short words for things, but it's the same in the contractor market. I think the serious things are and one big thing that stood out for me is that the margins on a lot of our work is incredibly tight. So this idea on the housing side that, contractors are just out to make money and there's profit in everything that we do. Actually it’s far from it, I think that's a challenge in so much as I genuinely want to help the housing sector get to where it wants to be. I can't do it on a shoestring. I need to make a margin to give you the quality that you need. So I think that was one big takeaway.

I think the other side of it has just been about the complexity of mobilising a £40,000 job is no different to the complexity of mobilising a £3 million, £5 million job as well. So an awful lot of governance and mobilisation has to go into those things to make it work the way you want to make it work.

And do you think that you could have made that transition 10 years ago, or is there a time served where you think, right, I'm glad I did it at this time of where I'm at in my career?

I mean as I say, it's different isn't it for different people? So I've been very lucky in my career that I was an Exec Director in my early 30s, so by the time I hit 50 I already had a good 15 years under my belt of working in senior positions. All the governance that goes with that, the strategies that need to be developed. So from a General Manager's perspective, I probably could have made that move 10 years ago.

But the last five years working at Orbit and I was Orbit's Director of Property Operations, I managed everything from reactive maintenance to planned. I had all of the compliance work as well. That probably is really what has stood me in good stead, jumping over the fence.

And there'll be some people watching this, thinking, I want to make that move. I'm too scared, shall I do it? And I've seen it over my 20 years of doing public and private sector recruitment. So I can relate to some of the things that you're saying, there's no real right time. What's your top two tips for someone to make that transition so they, they're successful?

I think you have to be open minded to a changing approach. Contractor market genuinely wants to do a great job. I don't see anything in any of the organisations I have relationships with that tells me otherwise. But they need to make money, they need to cover overheads and they need to produce some profit. Culturally, that's quite difficult from somebody in the housing world who looks at it the other way.

I remember having a conversation in my first few weeks with the business and on one particular job and it was quite a rarity, we were nearly up at sort of 8, 9%. And I said that's a lot. And I remember the Commercial Director saying to me, “I don't really want you saying that again”. So I think you have to be open minded. It is quite a different philosophy, it's a different culture. So that's one thing that I think people have to be ready for, is just embracing.

I think the other thing that people ideally do need to try and do is get some experience in different parts of what we call property, as I've managed to do. As I say, I was lucky that it was part of my role. But working in planned maintenance is very different to working in decarbonisation. It's different again from working in new build. So if anybody wants to take that particular route, probably if they could get themselves some sort of job shadowing or placements. Job swaps. A bit of time in each of those work streams. I think that would be very helpful.

And is there anything in terms of perception, as your perception changed on anything going to the private sector, bar the margin, how tight the margin's been?

Well, I can only speak for Seddon of course, that's all I know. I suppose I've been surprised that a lot of the organisations out there do want to do a great job. That feels a bit awkward saying that. The perception on the housing side certainly in my early career everybody was out to get one over on us and make significant profits, best job and then you know, gone. You won't see them again. I'm seeing a lot of people taking real care about what they want to do about giving something back as well in terms of social value. So yeah, it's just it's changed the way that I see the contractor market generally.

Just say let's make it up. Tomorrow you move back to public sector. What would be the top two learns that you would take from the private sector and then embed it into working in the public sector? Re-educate your peers. Having worked both sides of the fence.

I think the one of the significant ones for me is that there is a way to collaborate and a way not to collaborate. There are still organisations out there that are putting jobs out to market which is single stage design and build. You've got no place for negotiation, you've got no place for improving the specification in the first place. And quite often it's a race to the bottom line. I kind of get why some people would want to go down that route, but the reality is ultimately I don't think you're going to get the best outcome if that's the route that you want to take.

So for me, I think one of the things that I'd be back on the other side trying to re-educate my colleagues to do is if you want a quality job, if you want some combat, you want warranty. “Look, let's have a proper conversation with these guys and let's be open to their ideas about how we might go about doing that”. I think that's one thing that I would certainly seek to bring in.

The other thing, I'd probably be more challenging to contractors that were coming to my table saying, “ I can't make this job work.”  I'd be like, “okay, fine, let's have a look at your bridge.” So it's worked both ways really. I think I could help the housing sector understand, contractor market more. But equally I could represent the housing sector better knowing what I now know about how contractors price work and mobilise work.

You've mentioned social value and obviously we also do a lot of bids ourselves and the percentage of social value is increasing now, and rightly so. Talk us through how you think that's going to evolve over the next one, two, three years in terms of partnership and having true social value.

It is vitally important, not just from the point of view of the work that you win. I think all big businesses with a lot of money in the bank, as it were, should be doing something for social value. I think where at the moment we do have a challenge is, I don't think that expectations of the landlords that are commissioning our work align with what the reality is of actually sometimes how much it costs to deliver a decent social value outcome. And if you want us to deliver this menu of 15, 16 things, there might have to be a cost associated with that. But we try and do a blend of both.

So from a group perspective, we invest a proportion of our profits in social value activities. We're still, given the size of the business, doing really well with apprenticeships, for example, we took on 16 apprentices this year. We had over a thousand applicants. Which we're very proud of. And of course, the Procurement Act is going to force more social value contractually through arrangements which we've got one eye on. I think it comes back to that transparent and honest conversation with landlords about, well, look, we can do all of that, but if I do that at my cost, I'm into zero profit. We'd like to do it, but we'd like to build something in. It's part of the deal.

Interesting. And in terms of obviously knowing both sides of the fence, how has that helped you increase your superpowers of influencing client side? Now, obviously, you've got the res. Can't say, resume. We're not in America. You've got the background, in terms of your CV, of working for so many big organisations, how has that helped you increase your influence?

I think if I'm talking to landlord representatives these days and I've had the feedback so far from several organisations, they're actually finding it quite refreshing. That they're talking to an ex Director from a housing association who's been through the pain that they're still going through. Whether that's about damp and mould, whether it's about decarbonisation, they're talking to somebody that really understands their challenge.

And certainly in terms of some of the perception work that we've done recently with clients and sort of the general sector. One of the things that comes out time and time again is we want to work with partners that know us, understand our challenge, and can bring some solutions to the table. So that's been incredibly helpful to be able to have those conversations.

I think internally I've also driven Seddon quite hard on what I consider to be important things that we need to be better at, that I now know the housing world will be asking for when it next comes to market for whatever the particular piece of work is. So I remember, in the early days of me joining, one of the bids that we were looking at asked for the Sustainability Action Plan and how would we measure the outcomes and how would we report. And so I asked for the Sustainability Action Plan and somebody sent me the Carbon Plan, which is great but that's just kind of one several things that makes up a Sustainability Action Plan. So again, looking at it from the housing side of things, I'm working on the customer experience framework, I'm working on a sustainability strategy. So I'm bringing a lot more to Seddon that maybe the bigger tier ones they do more of this stuff and maybe we are a little bit behind the curve, I don't know. So I'm driving that.

And I think I'm also probably challenging the senior team at the moment and the board around their thinking on certain things. So, we've had quite a debate internally about whether the business gets involved in building safety work, for all of the reasons that we know, in terms of gateways and risk and all the stuff that goes with it. I have a slightly different view. I absolutely get the risk argument. But if we're not going to help, who is going to help? Is the market big enough to do all that needs to be done? And actually, from a commercial perspective, it is an opportunity and it's an opportunity that maybe in five, certainly 10 years’ time will be gone because buildings will be fully remediated, cladding will have been replaced and new facades put on. So I'm using it in different ways. It's a really interesting dynamic and swap.

But why, in your opinion, do you see not enough people coming from. Not even as an Exec Director, but even strong asset managers, strong housing management, strong social value specialists from the public sector. Why aren't more moving over to the Seddons’, the Equans’, the Fortems’ of this world, in your opinion?

I suppose there's a few things. This is just my perception. I can't say for definite, but I would imagine there are probably some on the contractor side that believe housing staff are a little bit soft underbelly. We don't work as hard, we don't have that kind of drive. We can't cut it in the commercial world and what's really interesting for me in joining Seddon, as I say, which has been around for 128 years, you kind of think they'd be at a certain place. And my MD, Peter, a couple of times he said at various meetings, he's looked at me and he said, you're more professional than we are. Which is a compliment.

What he really means by that is I think their perception of what they thought a housing person would be a little bit slow paced, a little bit laboured. The housing world has moved on significantly in the last few years and so there are some great people without doubt working in housing associations. So I think that's the first thing that the contractor market really has to kind of open its eyes to, is you've got some fantastic people that can make a difference. And I think fair play to Peter my MD, and when we had the conversation about was I going to join them or not, he said, look, I'm not looking for another way. It's another, United Living. No disrespect to those organisations, he said, but what I know will happen is they will come in and they will try and imprint their experience on this business. We want somebody from the housing world so that was pretty refreshing.

I don't think the contractor market goes looking the people either on the other side of the fence, as it were. Where are the platforms where those collaborative conversations take place? I can't think of many. I mean, I'm a board member of the NHMF, as you know, and we have a what we call a Service Provider Forum sitting below that where we've got contractors like Seddon, kind of conversing alongside the housing side of things. If there were more platforms like that, more collaboration, better understanding, maybe you would start to open those floodgates a little bit more. But right now I think there's a perception, I think maybe contractor market is not looking in that direction and it needs to more.

So what are the contractors doing rightly now from your observations of going, well, “we are going to get more women into leadership roles and more women to basically split that ratio up”, because there's obviously lots of discussions amongst all the contractors to do that. And there has been for the last five years, I think, pre pandemic. What do you think is the challenge on that?

It has to start at the top. Inevitably. There has to be a culture, a mission, a plan, to make that change. You know, sadly, I look around my own senior management team at the moment and the wider team, and they are typically men, white and to a degree of a certain age as well. And certainly in the few years that I've got left in my career, that is one of the things that I'm desperate to change. Not just from a kind of a man woman situation, but in all kinds of diverse ways.

So I think you have to have that very strong leadership. I think you have to have a goal, in mind. I mean, it's ironic really, when you look at the housing association market or local authorities as well, compared to the contractor market, I'd probably hazard a guess you've got more women in senior positions on the housing side, than you have on the Contractor side. Whether that's because that's the way the contractor market has wanted to keep things, I don't know. But if we want to make that change then it has to come from the top.

And in terms of your experience, from a contractor's viewpoint, what are the most common pitfalls that you've seen working with housing associations and how can those be avoided? So there's more true collaboration as opposed to supplier, customer, you know, master servant relationship.

I'm not saying that transactional relationships can't work. They can if it's a particular job, a one off. In. Out. Gone. But there are still organisations out there that behave in a transactional way. They're not looking to get into a collaborative partnership with people. I've got a budget, I need you to do this, please do it. And we don't negotiate, we don't plan, we don't join it all about what needed to be achieved. I think that's a flaw in the system if I'm honest.

The number of bids that we pitch for where weeks into the job we're having to vary the scope of the work significantly because their data might be poor, or they planned the scope wrong, or maybe the specifications wrong. But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they're necessarily poor in that sense. I work with a lot of small to medium sized housing organisations and to be fair to them, they haven't got the expertise and the sizable teams that some of the bigger players have.

And small to medium is probably 6,000 units?

Yeah, something like that. Around about 5 to 6000 mark. And so again what I think our job should be is about trying to guide, educate, and help those organisations to a better place at the outset. But if you're going to come to market with a single stage, design and build and it's all about price and it's not about quality. You're going to get, what you're going to get. So that for me is a significant pitfall. I just think unrealistic expectations. I think a lot of this is just about, if people are willing to come to the table at the outset of what's needed, you can kind of talk these things through. You might not always agree on things but you'll understand each other’s position. Whereas I still think we're a bit too transactional in our relationships.

Do you do the contractors? Obviously now that you're working private sector side, is there enough collaboration between all of the usual suspects to have conversations? Because there's enough work there for everyone to discuss, innovation, efficiencies. How can we get more people from public sector? Is there enough conversations where you guys meet up in terms of your peers?

In my short time with Seddon, I would say not. As I say, I talked about the NHMF Service Provider Forum. I think that that particular group’s  now got something like 40, 50 contractors members, who meet on a quarterly basis. So that's really helpful. But that typically tends to be about a theme for the day that's about social value or the Procurement Act for example. I'm not aware really of many platforms where you're just talking about a problem.

It's interesting because the housing market, was like that for a long, long time. I was working for various housing associations, and would you talk to somebody else about problems you were facing. Well, no, you wouldn't because they're a competitor. You want that new build business. That's really begun to change in the housing sector. There's an awful lot of collaboration these days, driven by the NHMF as their trade body.

Then you've got the Chartered Institute of Housing on the professional standard side of things. I'm not aware at the moment of any sort of operational conversations that are taking place about how we could all. Because you're right, that's my view. I think there is more than enough work. There's more than enough to go round. And that's one of my challenges for the next two to three years. I am competing against the very big tier ones. And, I strongly believe there is a place for SME’s such as the likes of Seddon.

Do you think over the next, you know, looking into your crystal ball, do you think we're going to get that back in terms of regional contractors, where the associations will want to partner with a regional firm, or are we just kind of going towards big, multi branded, corporate, billion pound turnover businesses?

I think there is an intent to support SME’s. You look at the Procurement Act and it tries to drive commissioners to a place where everybody gets kind of a share of everything. It's a level playing field. But the reality is that the significant players in that space can produce the glossy brochures, can reduce the margins, can buy work, if that's needed. And if you don't know where your next sort of pipeline is coming from, as a regional contractor, you can very quickly find yourself without work and therefore out of business.

So there's got to be proper investment regionally in keeping businesses like that going. And it's interesting, I had a conversation with, well, two people actually. So, one individual was very, very clear with me. We are only commissioning significant tier ones because, they had a particular reason for wanting to do that. And I'm like, but I'm on your doorstep. Shouldn't I have some slice of the pie as it were? Not because I think we deserve it, but I think we can do you a good job, but absolutely not.

And then I spoke to somebody else and they were sort of, we're a little bit fed up now with some of the big conglomerates. We want some fresh faces and actually we do think there's a place for SME’s, so almost like a two tier structure as it were. But that's at the moment I think that's being driven by individuals and the way that they see things, not by policy.

I'm not so sure that the Procurement Act's ambition to want to generate business, for the SME market is actually going to happen. People will find a way around that if they still favour a big tier 1.

Maybe some of us aren't well known enough. That's the other thing. As I say, I'm knocking on doors and they either don't know us or they haven't heard of us. And these are businesses, these are organisations that are only 10 miles down the road and they've never heard of us. So again, because you've not quite got that big budget behind you, you're not able to do all of that marketing and branding and awareness. It's hard getting out there and finding work.

If you could have perfection in terms of cross collaboration, where you could control the playing field, in terms of true collaboration, innovation between public and private sector clients, how would you run that?

Wow, that is a question. I think you'd have to have some independence to the process. I think you would have to have something that brings those people together so you've not got a player that's the dominant in the relationship. It would have to have some kind of independence to make it happen. I think you would have to invest. You use the football analogy

And what else would you do?

You'd have to have some real star players, wouldn't you? Somebody would have to kind of be the captain. Show the lead, take that drive. I think when it comes to it, a lot of that kind of, development that we're talking about happens through few people who have that drive. And if you haven't got, then you ain't going to get that either.

But for me, I think this has to come from government. It really does. And sadly at the moment, I think there is a spirit of optimism that's not been in the sector for quite some time in terms of the new houses and, the existing homes that need remediating. Different issue when it comes to cash. Governments don't want to interfere in local and regional structures and of course, devolutions. I mean, that's a possibility, actually.

If you look at the current arrangement in the West Midlands and same in Greater Manchester, devolution could be a game changer for us in this part of the world. The mayor's office could start to drive greater collaboration. I think in terms of our small part in that we want to be knocking on the mayor's door talking about, well, hang on a minute, look you're all about equality, you're all about diverse, opportunities. We ain't going to get a look in. How can we change that?

And with a change of government, what do you think are the top two challenges that we've got within social housing, property maintenance world in the next two years? What are the top two?

I think we've got to get to a position where the buildings in which a lot of those residents live can be with some confidence confirmed as safe for occupation. And we're still not there yet. There is a huge amount of work to be done around damp, mould, fire safety and so on and so forth.

I think having a house that's kind of old and just needs remediating is very different to having a house that's not safe. I think that's a massive challenge. And again, there's just not enough cash around. You're seeing for the first time in a long, long time balance sheets of housing associations really beginning to struggle because they've had to spend so much money on their existing stock whilst also trying to build. So, that's a big challenge for them.

Second thing, I don't know, I worry about the sector, if I'm honest with you. In the same way that the education sector and the health sector became quite a beaten up sector. People only talk about their failures, not about the great things that they do. If we're not careful, we'll see the same with housing. I understand there has to be a place for strong regulation and bringing people to book when it's just not good enough.

But there needs to be some opportunity to learn from those mistakes as well. And culturally at the moment I'm not so sure that we're in a learning phase. I still think we're in a bit of a finger pointing phase, as I say, we have to accept that we've not done well enough at times, that seeing a number of senior colleagues leave the housing sector who just are not enjoying it anymore. And for a lot of them it was a vocation and they genuinely believed in the mission and the pressure that comes with it now.

Obviously you've spoke about the immobilisation £40 grand project to a £4 million. You've still got to do the same level of governance and work. What's the one or two things in terms of innovation have really impressed you?

Again, I can only really speak for Seddon that I work for. I'm bowled over by the ambition the family that own the business have when it comes to social value. They really do live the values. Their mission is to move into places, do what needs to be done and come back out, but in such a way that we leave those places in a better state than they were when we first kind of joined in. I think that's been incredibly impressive and, that's a big driver for me in terms of why I'm happy to work for the business. I think the quality of what we do as well. I know there's obviously other examples of poor quality, but the particular business that I work for. The business has worked very, very hard over many, many years to build a process that kind of works a bit like an engine. And you get a great outcome at the end of it. I'm proud to be working for an organisation where, the Clerk of Works is coming along and saying this is the best thing we've seen for a long, long time.  We’re going to put you in for an award. We're not just about slap a bit of that on and, off we go, see you again.

What are one or two of the top tips would you give someone? Because not everyone's going to be an Executive Director at 34. What are the top tips would you give someone who's working a public sector, who thinks “look over there, what if I go over to that side, I can do a good job and help our sector”. What's your, final tips on that?

We talked about people that need to have a drive to make some of these things happen. There's nothing stopping one of those individuals from trying to create that collaborative platform that we've spoken about, within their own organisation. How about we invite these contractors in for proper conversations about what are we doing right, what are we not doing right? So there's something about the individual just getting themselves immersed in that environment that's not necessarily about job shadowing or job placement. It's just about getting involved in broader conversations. And for me, if I'm honest with you, knowing a lot of the people that I know on the housing side. Hopefully it works. If it doesn't work. You're interchangeable is my view. And I think that's the other thing, you've got to be a little bit more brave about just taking that leap of faith.

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