CIEH Housing and Health Conference

Adrian Chowns Msc. Bsc.(Hons) MRICS, Head of Safer Housing and Communities, Coventry City Council. Adrian is a Chartered Building Surveyor who also holds a master’s degree in environmental health and is currently the Head of Safer Housing and Communities for Coventry City Council where he manages a number of teams delivering the broad range of private sector housing services. Adrian is a specialist environmental health professional with over 30 years’ experience in dealing with private sector housing matters. He is proficient in enforcing conditions in the PRS and has developed and implemented a number of large-scale property licensing schemes focusing on innovative and proactive approaches to securing effective delivery.

Anees Mank, Programme and Policy Lead (Retrofit), Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Anees is a Chartered Environmental Health Practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in Housing and Regeneration, Energy Efficiency, and Fuel Poverty. He is a member of the CIEH Housing Advisory Panel. Anees has led the delivery of over £300m of funding through various housing retrofit schemes across Greater Manchester. He has also overseen the procurement of a £1 billion national Net Zero Housing Retrofit Framework Agreement and the delivery of the Local Net Zero Accelerator (LNZA) retrofit workstream. Anees is currently collaborating with the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance and the University of Manchester on the development of an Embodied Carbon Calculator and the use of bio-based materials for retrofit and new build.

Ben Saltmarsh, Head of Wales, National Energy Action (NEA). Ben leads NEA’s advocacy and engagement priorities in Wales and provides strategic direction for the charity’s wider work programme across the nation. He plays a central role engaging with key stakeholders – including Welsh Government, the Senedd, elected representatives, local authorities, Ofgem, industry and partner organisations – to see that everyone can afford to keep warm and healthy at home.

He is chair of the Fuel Poverty Coalition Cymru, oversees the secretariat for the Senedd’s Cross Party Group on Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency, serves on several advisory groups, and acts as NEA’s senior media spokesperson for Wales.

Bethan Jones, Operational Manager, Rent Smart Wales. Bethan has a BSC (Hons) in Environmental Health, Diploma in Housing and Business Administration. She has managed environmental health and housing services since 1991 in Bristol and Cardiff. Her experience includes private and public sector housing work including HMO enforcement, empty homes and compulsory purchase and Renewal Areas, group repair and renovation grant activities.

A key aspect of her work throughout her career has involved nurturing partnerships with local landlords, voluntary organisations and universities.

Bethan currently leads Rent Smart Wales (the Welsh Government all Wales landlord registration and licensing scheme) following the designation of Cardiff Council as the Single Licensing Authority in 2015. She is also Chair of the Housing Expert Panel in Wales, part of the Welsh partnership led by Directors of Public Protection to share best practice, policy development and collaborative working where that makes sense.

Bill Purvis, Health and Fuel Poverty Consultant, National Energy Action (NEA). Bill Purvis supports the development and delivery of the Warm Homes, Healthy Futures programme.

His role focuses on strengthening links between health and social care professionals and NEA’s specialist energy advice and income maximisation services, enabling frontline practitioners across Great Britain to better support vulnerable households experiencing fuel poverty.

Prior to joining NEA, Bill spent 28 years working with High Peak Borough Council and Derbyshire County Council, developing and delivering environmental health, fuel poverty and health programmes. This included leading work on the Derbyshire Healthy Home programme, which accepted referrals from housing and social care professionals across the county and provided free energy advice, heating, housing and hoarding support to more than 4,000 high‑risk households over a ten‑year period.

Professor Caroline Hunter, York Law School, University of York. Professor Caroline Hunter is an emeritus professor at York Law School, University of York. She has been researching and writing on housing law and policy for 35 years. Recent projects have involved research on property guardians (for the London Assembly) and leasehold reform (for the Welsh government). She is a co-investigator on the ESRC funded research project: ‘Understanding criminality in the private rented sector and co-producing solutions.’ The project was completed this year, and Caroline led the work package on housing justice. For 20 years she was a tribunal judge in the Northern region of the Residential Property tribunal. She now sits in the Welsh tribunal.

Charlotte Ward, Head of Private Sector Housing, London Borough of Ealing. Charlotte Ward qualified as an Environmental Health Officer 30 years ago and has extensive experience in private sector housing across several London boroughs, including Barnet, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, and Barking & Dagenham.

She is currently Head of Private Sector Housing at the London Borough of Ealing, which operates one of the largest property licensing schemes in London. Her experience covers regulation of the full range of complex private sector housing, including HMO management, enforcement and prosecutions, compulsory purchase, high rise buildings, and tenancy relations.  Her service is leading activity to address a huge increase in substandard HMOs emerging across the borough.  She has led large‑scale selective and additional licensing schemes from Secretary of State approval through to implementation, and now leads on delivery of new duties under the Renters’ Rights Act. She has also contributed to national and regional working groups with MHCLG, DWP and the GLA, and has been a guest panellist at the London Assembly Housing Committee.

David Smith, Partner and Housing Litigator, Spector Constant & Williams. David Smith is a partner in a London law firm. He is well known for providing advice across the full range of private rented housing law at all levels of courts and tribunals.

Dr Ffion Prothero, GP. Dr Ffion Prothero has nearly fifteen years of medical and clinical experience and currently works as a GP with a Special Interest in Health Inequalities in Flintshire, North Wales. She is also the Cluster Lead for North West Flintshire. She is passionate about working in collaboration with partners both within and outside the health sector where citizens and communities can reap the benefits particularly through preventative measures and consideration of the wider determinants that impact on health. Her work emphasises the value of people and communities and she continues to be committed to this, so everyone has an opportunity to live longer, healthier and fairer lives.

Dr Henry Dawson CEnvH MCIEH, Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Environmental Health at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Henry’s research interests focus on regulatory interventions for housing and health. His recent work includes tenant consultation in social housing, national analysis of property licensing schemes, an empty properties handbook for Wales and authoring of the updates to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) Operating Guidance. Henry sits on the Wales Housing Expert Panel, the Rent Smart Wales Advisory Panel, the working group for Part K of the Building Regulations and the CIEH Housing Advisory Panel.

James Wilson, Head of Environment and Sustainability, Great Yarmouth Borough Council. James Wilson is a seasoned environmental health and public service leader with three decades of experience in local government. He has spent 15 years managing multidisciplinary regulatory teams and now is the Head of Environment and Sustainability at Great Yarmouth Borough Council, where he drives corporate strategy, major contracts, emergency planning, and the council’s net‑zero agenda. He is also responsible for managing the Councils regulatory functions including private rented sector housing, where the Council takes a strong approach with a small team. The Council has just implemented a new selective licensing scheme and have recently been successful in a nationally significant upper tier tribunal hearing.

Jeremy Thwaites, Associate Director, OFR Consultants. Jeremy has over 20 years of experience in Building Control and residential construction, with a particular focus on the appraisal and remediation of external wall construction over the past six years. He has gained extensive experience in various construction methods and types of developments, ranging from low-rise housing to high-rise buildings with multiple occupancies within the UK.
Jeremy’s primary skills include a good understanding of residential design and construction, expertise in external wall systems, and the installation of passive fire protection in residential buildings. Additionally, he has experience implementing bespoke quality management systems for construction, particularly those involving the installation of fire protection measures.
Since joining OFR in 2020, Jeremy has served as a Project Manager on a range of projects, including the recladding and remediation of external wall systems on residential schemes. As part of OFR's Expert Witness Team, he has also been involved in several projects, acting as an expert advisor for numerous residential developments and providing technical support to the team on projects involving disputes related to external wall systems or internal compartmentation.

Joanna Seymour, Head of Environmental Health Workforce Programme, CIEH. Joanna Seymour is a UKPHR-registered Public Health Practitioner and Registered Environmental Health Practitioner, currently Head of the Environmental Health Workforce Programme at CIEH. She has extensive experience across housing, environmental health, and public health, with a particular focus on improving housing conditions for vulnerable populations and tackling fuel poverty.

Joanna brings extensive leadership and delivery experience across environmental health, housing, and public health. Prior to joining CIEH, she was Partnerships Director at Warm Wales, where she combined strategic project development with operational delivery, staff management, and the identification and cultivation of new partnerships. She led on the development of new project opportunities aimed at tackling fuel poverty and improving health outcomes.

Earlier in her career, Joanna held senior housing and environmental health roles across a range of local authorities. At Flintshire County Council, within Housing Standards, she focused on improving housing conditions for the most vulnerable tenants, working closely with homelessness prevention, housing options, bond teams, and tenancy support services. Her role included investigating complaints of harassment and illegal eviction.

At Wirral Council, Joanna managed the Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) Team and led Healthy Homes, a multi-agency initiative delivering cost-effective home improvements with significant health benefits. This work particularly improved housing standards in the private rented sector for vulnerable households and those experiencing fuel poverty.

Joanna has also worked for Chester City Council, Wrexham County Borough Council, and Manchester City Council, including within a busy reactive housing enforcement team dealing with complex housing complaints and large HMOs.

She qualified as an Environmental Health Practitioner from Birmingham University in 2005, completing an MSc in Environmental Health.

Dr Kit Colliver, Research Associate, University of York. Kit is a Research Associate at the University of York, where they understake policy-related research on welfare, housing and social inequalities. Working alongside Prof Caroline Hunter, Kit delivered the 'Housing Justice' stream of the research study Understanding criminal landlordism in the private rented sector and co-producing solutions, examining the enforcement role of local authorities under the Housing Act 2004 and Housing and Planning Act 2016, and the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. Before joining the University of York, Kit held research roles at the Scottish Government and the University of West of Scotland. They have a PhD on homelessness policy from I-SPHERE, Heriot Watt University. Prior to returning to academia, Kit was a practitioner in homelessness and support housing organisations.

Louise Harford, Strategic Housing Improvement Partner, Liverpool City Council. Louise is a passionate EHO specialising in the regulation and enforcement of private sector housing with a passion for improving wider determinants of health through partnership working, collaboration and continuous learning. Having recently redesigned homeless services in Liverpool securing £1.9m of investment into staffing and resources and leading multi million pound procurement initiatives to secure good quality temporary accommodation and affordable move on for residents, Louise's current priorities are centred around empty homes objectives, neighbourhood delivery and taking part in Governments test learn and grow initiative to deliver joined up responses for improved outcomes for residents.

Mark Hope, Senior Policy and Public Affairs Executive, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH). Mark has been our housing lead since joining the organisation in 2022. He manages our housing advisory panel, working with our expert panel members to produce substantive policy outputs. In 2025 these outputs included briefings for parliamentarians on the Renters’ Rights Bill, written evidence to a Commons select committee inquiry on housing conditions and substantial consultation responses on the Decent Homes Standard, energy efficiency and supported housing. Mark led our parliamentary work on the Renters’ Rights Bill (which included getting amendments on licensing tabled and spoken on in the Commons and the Lords).

Pat Austin, Director, National Energy Action (NEA NI). Pat has been Director of NEA NI for over 20 years. She is an Economics graduate of Queen's University Belfast and a trained social worker. Prior to NEA she worked with Help the Aged where she managed their advice and advocacy services.

At NEA, she works closely with the key government departments tackling poverty issues. Working across many of their structures over the years, she most recently worked as part of the co-design groups of the Energy Strategy and the Fuel Poverty Strategy where she remains a key representative on fuel poverty.

She has built and consolidated strong partnerships across the relevant statutory sectors and currently chairs the Fuel Poverty Coalition NI which consists of over 150 organisations across the private, public, voluntary and community sectors. Her experience covers a wide range of disciplines, such as Strategic Planning, Conflict Resolution, Project Management and communication.

Richard Tacagni CEnvH MCIEH, Managing Director at London Property Licensing. Richard is a Chartered EHP with over 30 years’ experience. After a career in local government, he established an independent housing consultancy (2015) that provides simple, impartial and expert advice to landlords, letting agents and local authorities. He is a member of the CIEH Housing Advisory Panel and a board member of safeagent, a not for profit accrediting organisation for letting and managing agents in the private rented sector. He has recently been putting policy into practice by undertaking a full eco retrofit of a period property, with many lessons learnt along the way.

Robyn Casey, Head of PRS Standards, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG). Robyn Casey is Head of Private Rented Sector Standards at MHCLG, leading on policy areas including the application of the Decent Homes Standard and Awaab’s Law to privately rented homes. Prior to this role, Robyn worked on housing strategy, and on prison leaver policy at the Ministry of Justice. She also worked in the charity sector for nearly a decade, with a focus on homelessness and health organisations.