Charmaine Simei: ‘Yes, social housing is an honourable profession’

Her office is yet to be decorated fully, but has a picture of her son on the desk in the corner.

Ms Simei joined Tuntum in October, from Longhurst, where she was director of customer experience and communities. She has worked in housing for 28 years, 12 of those in senior roles, but this is her first time at the helm of an organisation.

She grew up in Peterborough, born to a Caribbean father and Anglo-Indian mother. After her time in London, Ms Simei went to university to do a sociology and psychology degree, specialising in the emergence of homelessness in new towns in her final year. She then moved back to Peterborough and has worked in the sector ever since.

Someone mentioned that she needed to think seriously about becoming a chief executive 10 years ago, “but I wasn’t ready”, she says. “Or I took it as a throwaway statement and went and had a son at 41 and got on with making a difference wherever I thought I could.”

Several organisations approached Ms Simei about chief executive positions before she joined Tuntum. The lack of diversity in top roles played a part in delaying her decision to go for these jobs, she adds. “I didn’t see me reflected in those roles; I didn’t see me reflected in the board meetings I was in and out of.

“That experience at the time, even going to board meetings as an assistant director and a director, was painful and draining enough. I wouldn’t have even considered it, not seriously,” she says.

“It got to a point where so many people around me were saying, ‘Are you going to crack on with this? You need to step into this space,’ that I ended up thinking, ‘OK, why not you?’”

In 2017, 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire. Ms Simei used to live in a tower block nearby in Ladbroke Grove. 

“[It] was a low, low period. When Grenfell happened, I kept imagining what a fire would have been like in the block that I used to live in. And I just couldn’t get my head round what I was doing. Why am I here? What value am I adding?”

The case of Awaab Ishak was also a factor. The two-year-old died from prolonged exposure to mould in a housing association flat in Rochdale. A horrific and preventable tragedy, it was another big blow for a
sector already under the spotlight. “I thought, ‘This is why you’re needed now,’” she says, adding: “That sounds really arrogant,” (although it doesn’t).

In 2021, Ms Simei won professional of the year at the Women in Housing and Housing Heroes awards.

Described as “inspirational, inclusive, enthusiastic and a fantastic role model”, she won after introducing tenancy sustainment officers, launching a hardship fund and community grants fund.

“I was completely blown away. And what that award did for me in terms of my profile … I don’t know, I might not be sitting here. But that was wonderful.”

Tuntum has around 65 staff members, who represent “potentially 17 different countries of cultural heritage”. 

“It’s an absolute gem,” she says. “We joke it’s a United Nations of Tuntum and it really does have a different feel for me … it feels like I can breathe.

“This organisation was set up with a particular drive and ethos and you can still see it reflected in the team and the board to this day.”

Being small is positive in many ways, but there are also challenges, particularly given the demands facing social landlords. “I’m fully supportive of the regulatory standards that are coming in. I’m just hoping we don’t end up with a series of unintended consequences,” she says, by which she means mergers. 

“Smaller organisations that do have that community reach, that are able to return higher customer satisfaction rates, I hope they don’t get caught up in the nets and find it difficult to survive and thrive because of that resource demand and stretch to attempt to adhere to the raft of measures that are coming,” she says.

Two years ago, Tuntum was downgraded to G2 on governance after the regulator said it needed to strengthen its “risk management and organisational capacity”. Ms Simei says a lot of headway has been made on the way back to G1, and she is working closely with staff and the regulator.

In her first week, she spent time with call handlers and the direct labour organisation when they were out doing repairs. “I wanted to see how information was coming into the business and how that information and that data were then being served up at the board table,” she says.

Where does she see Tuntum in 10 years? “I’ll be honest, in the here and now, I haven’t got any big vision or aspiration, other than I feel the weight of responsibility to retain Tuntum’s independence and its ethos. It’s got a strong tradition of taking on and taking in [Black and minority ethnic] staff and supporting them and training them. They move through and they go out into the housing sector. I’m content with that if I can keep that sustained.”

She has a son at home, a daughter who is travelling at the moment, and a long-term partner. What does her ideal day look like when she’s not working? 

“That my son will talk to me,” she jokes. She loves swimming. “I get a chance to think. I love that moment when you go under the water, just submerged. 

“I’m quite boring, mainly. I am obsessed with work. I love housing. I read about it: housing and social policy.”

When Ms Simei talks about Tuntum, she smiles. 

“I feel so privileged that Tuntum has found me and I found them,” she says.

“I’m testing out my hypotheses I had 28 years ago. Yes, social housing is an honourable profession. Yes, we should be able to do the right thing. And I’ll be buggered if we can’t do it in an organisation of this size.”