South-West London housing provider RHP, has announced the appointment of Simon Devonshire OBE as the new Chair of their Board.
This comes as John Newbury steps down after completing a successful nine-year term as RHP’s Chair.
Simon Devonshire OBE has an extensive corporate career and is also a serial entrepreneur. He previously ran O2 Business, the business division of the mobile-network and co-founded Wayra Europe, the business accelerator belonging to Telefonica. He served as Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) for the UK Government for three and a half years and co-founded One Water, which has donated more than £20m to providing clean water in Africa.
Simon says of his appointment: “For the past two decades my family and I have loved living within one mile of RHP’s front door. I am especially proud to join a company whose purpose is so significant. The consistent feature of my career is helping to grow companies that enable people to flourish. A good home is fundamental to that aim. I look forward to helping RHP build further on its remarkable track-record of providing great affordable homes for more local people.”
Simon joins RHP at an exciting time as they strive to keep improving their services for customers, provide more safe, green and smart homes that are in line with their sector-leading home standard and build on their reputation as an inspiring place to work through a series of internal transformation programmes.
RHP’s Chief Executive David Done OBE commented: “We’re delighted to have appointed Simon as our new Chair of the Board. He brings with him a wealth of experience which will add great value and provide a fresh perspective that’ll help us to achieve our ambitious goals.”
Acknowledging the departing Chair, David added: “I’d also like to express huge thanks to John Newbury for the great impact he has made as Chair over the past nine years. It’s been a pleasure working closely with John. It’s been a successful period for us as an organisation and John has played a key role in this.”
John and Simon officially transfer Chair responsibilities at RHP’s AGM at the end of July.
