We’ve announced we’re talking with Southern Housing Group about merging our two organisations.
Southern Housing Group share a lot of similarities with Optivo. Like us, they have a large number of homes in Kent, Sussex and London, so lots of our colleagues already work side-by-side in many of the same communities. And importantly, they share our focus on resident voice and resident involvement.
Why merge?
The Boards of Optivo and Southern Housing Group believe that in these challenging times, we could provide better services to residents by joining forces.
We want your views
It’s also important we hear your views about the proposed merger. We’ll be running consultations with residents. We’ll share more details about how you can get involved with this in the coming weeks.
By coming together to form a larger housing association, there’ll be exciting opportunities to invest in stronger services. Your views will be key to shaping what this could look like.
We’ll also need to design a new resident governance structure for the new organisation. It’ll be an exciting opportunity to shape the future of resident involvement for the new organisation.
What would the new organisation look like?
The new organisation would be called Southern Housing and key leaders would be:
- Chair designate: Sir Peter Dixon, current chair of Optivo and former chair of the Housing Corporation.
- Chief Executive designate: Paul Hackett CBE, current chief executive of Optivo
- Deputy Chief Executive designate: Alan Townshend, current chief executive of Southern Housing Group
What are the next steps?
Following the initial announcement we’ve started careful discussions, financial checks and legal negotiations. We’ll keep you informed as we move through the process and let you know how you can get involved.