James Place, Managing Director:
James joined Hilldale in May 2023 as Head of Operations and was appointed as Managing Director in 2024.
Before joining Hilldale, he held several leadership positions in a National Housing Association. James is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Specialist Supported Housing Network as well as an Executive member of the Hilldale Board.
He has extensive experience in housing management and within the social housing sector. He has a passion for delivering consistently excellent housing and customer services.
Anne-Marie Holyoak, Head of Operations:
Anne-Marie was appointed Head of Operations in June 2024. She has over 20 years’ experience of working within the social housing sector. She has worked in supported accommodation, general needs and more recently, Specialised Supported Accommodation across England and Northern Ireland. She has extensive Housing Management and Regulatory experience and takes pride in creating a positive culture within the workplace.
I’m most looking forward to working with colleagues and our tenants, to continue the great work to improve services, and give tenants a platform to be heard and have a say on what is important to them in their homes and communities
Phil Parrott, New Business Manager:
Phil has spent all his career working in the social housing sector.
He graduated from the University of the West of England, Bristol in 1995 with a BA (Hons.) in Housing & Development and has since attained a Post – Graduate Diploma in Housing Practice.
He worked for Wigan Council / Wigan & Leigh Homes from 1996 – 2020 and has covered several roles including Area Housing Manager as well as Service Manager posts including Voids & Lettings, Estate Management and Enforcement – Rents & Anti-Social Behaviour.
In March 2020, he joined Hilldale as their New Business Manager. He is responsible for helping to deliver new supported housing schemes that will make excellent homes for our exceptional residents.
Andrew Oates, Head of Housing:
Andrew joined Hilldale in 2022. He has over 35 years working in housing with several different organisations including Local Authorities and Housing Associations, providing both general needs and supported housing. Andrew has extensive housing management experience and lead significant large projects including reorganisation of older persons housing service, implementing choice based letting, large scale capital work projects and community well-being projects.
Andrew enjoys visiting services and interacting with residents, ensuring they are happy with homes and ensuring that they are safe and well maintained. Andrew leads the Housing Team with a team of 9 Housing Officers.
Helen Warburton, Income Manager:
Helen joined Hilldale in 2020 initially on a temporary contract. The focus of the piece of work she was doing was to audit many accounts that had been looked after by another organisation & were being bought back under Hilldale’s portfolio. These accounts required detailed oversight to bring them into the correct payment & prevent further arrears. The interrogation & success of this piece of work led to Helen being appointed as Income Manager.
This is Helen’s first role within the housing sector. However, Helen brings a wealth of knowledge and skills that enable her to achieve positive outcomes across the organisation. She is keen to continue to gain a comprehensive understanding of the housing sector to support the growth of the business.
Helen understands the importance of the income that Hilldale require to survive as a business. However, she feels strongly about ensuring that our tenants are given the service they deserve by being supportive, listening, being transparent & understanding their needs to ensure positive outcomes.
Change Housing Group:
Hilldale obtains services from the group. You can read more about this on our who we are page. Change colleagues are also members of the Hilldale Leadership Team, playing key roles in our strategy and service delivery.
Harry Couper, Finance Business Partner:
Harry Couper (ACMA) is the Finance Business Partner for Hilldale, working at Change Housing. Harry is a chartered accountant and member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. With over 11 years’ experience working with various housing associations, all within the specialised supported housing sector. He has been at Change Housing since the Groups’ inception in 2019. The Change Housing’s finance team are responsible for providing the Group with financial management, from transaction processing through to essential financial metrics for board decisions.
Harry has a proven track record for developing an association’s long-term financial viability, through strategic awareness, commerciality, communication skills and leadership. Confident in delivering effective management information to all key stakeholders, providing business insights and analytics that can be interpret to others. Always carefully considering the facts, with assessment of the risks and opportunities during organisational change, acquisition, business integration, and building and developing a high calibre team.
The specialist supported housing is something that is close to Harry’s heart, his sister is a supported living tenant, her being able to live more independently as part of the community, which has been enabled through a specialised supported housing property provided by a housing association like Hilldale.
Simon Cooper, Head of Assets:
Simon joined change housing in 2019 as Head of assets, Change Housing provide the asset services for Hilldale which include, Maintenance, Compliance, Surveys and many more services.
Simons first role in the housing sector was contracts manager at SBH before quickly going into the head of repairs role after 3 months.
Simon understands the importance of keeping all Hilldale’s tenants safe in their homes and are always looking at ways to continuously keep improving the services we provide for all the tenants.
Amy Kirk, Customer Engagement Manager:
Amy Joined Change Housing in September 2022 in the newly appointed role of Customer Engagement Manager to drive delivery of the customer engagement strategy across the group.
Amy has worked in the housing sector since 2019 in various leadership roles and her career history has always focused on customer satisfaction. Amy prides herself on ensuring our tenants voices are heard in Hilldale and is passionate that what we do is tenant led. Since joining Amy has created several mechanisms for our tenants to engage with us and is keen to continue to grow this. Amy Enjoys meeting with tenants and hearing their stories.
Amy is currently studying for her Chartered Institute of Housing degree to further her knowledge of the sector.
