Stonewater appoints British Land capital markets chief to its board

Stonewater has drafted British Land’s head of capital markets on to its board as it seeks to “maintain financial resilience” while ramping up development to 1,500 homes a year.

The 34,500-home housing association announced the appointment of Hursh Shah, who has worked for £486m-turnover master developer British Land for the past 12 years.

Nick Harris, chief executive at Stonewater said: ”We wanted to bring somebody in from a financial perspective who has strong expertise in fund raising, to support our development aims and to ensure the association maintains financial strength and resilience, particularly in the challenging markets and operating environment.

“I believe in Hursh, we have found this.”

Shah has already served as a member on two panels at Stonewater, which has an ambition to build at least 1,500 new homes a year from 2022/23. This would be a large increase on the 836 homes it completed in 2021/22. Stonewater last month reported a surplus of £23.9m in its accounts for the year to 31 March, down on the £48.8m reported the previous year.

Shah will have a particular focus on finance following the departure from the board of Tariq Kazi, who also serves as corporate finance director at London housing assocaition Optivo, earlier this year. 

See also:Stonewater appoints director to ramp up development

Stonewater has also appointed HR director Barry Hoffman to its board.

Hoffman is the group HR director at real estate investment trust Land Securities and has held roles at  FTSE100 property developers and global IT firms.  He has also carried out non-executive roles for Sightsavers, CIPD and The Royal Photographic Society.

Harris said the appointment of Hoffman would strengthen the board “with the addition of expertise to provide governance oversight of organisational changes and our digitalisation programme and growth ambitions.”