Matthew Walker: ‘I get a kick out of knowing what I do is helping improve people’s lives’
Leeds Federated chief and PlaceShapers chair Matthew Walker first joined the housing sector over 20 years ago. He speaks to James Riding about helping people, regeneration and building more social homes. Photography by Asadour Guzelian
In 2004, shortly after Matthew Walker became chief executive of Leeds Federated Housing Association, the landlord was inspected by the Audit Commission and put under supervision.
“We were given zero stars in certain aspects,” he explains. “It was a horrible 18 months; all of which I spent waiting for someone to go, ‘Come on son, it’s your time now. On your way.’”
Almost 20 years on, however, Mr Walker remains in post – and Leeds Federated is significantly strengthened. The landlord now owns 4,418 social homes across five local authorities in West Yorkshire, up from 4,020 in 2004, and manages one in five housing association homes in Leeds.
Yet, the quick-talking Bradford boy still hungers for new challenges. “I would have never taken a job in London,” he says. “And I didn’t want to settle down and have an easy, boring life, so I took on extra things.”
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Chief among these is PlaceShapers, the group of more than 100 ‘place-based’ landlords, which he has chaired since 2020. Its members are small to medium-sized housing associations that – crucially – operate within a specific geographic area. “You’re not necessarily big nationally, but you’re big locally,” as Mr Walker puts it.
For much of the past decade, such contentedly compact organisations did not seem to be a priority for the government. Ministers tended to encourage housing associations to pursue mergers and grow in order to finance aggressive development programmes.
Now, though, with landlords turning their focus to tenant satisfaction and improving their existing stock, the benefits of a more local approach appear clearer.
Housebuilding and mergers
Leeds Federated develops around 150 new homes a year – not insubstantial for a landlord of its size. “I’m pro-development, but I’ve never been development at all costs,” Mr Walker states.
Pointing to the first part of his tenure as chief executive, which was very much internally focused, he adds: “I’ve always been of the view you get what you’ve got right first and then you do other things.”
PlaceShapers members have merged from time to time, and the organisation does not have an anti-merger stance. “We don’t want to say PlaceShapers is for or against mergers. If the merger makes sense for the community and for the customers, then we will be supportive,” says Mr Walker.
Indeed, Leeds Federated itself has “dabbled” with mergers in the past, Mr Walker says, including with both bigger and smaller organisations, but the board has always concluded that its objectives can be met better as “masters of their own destinies, setting the policies to their customers, with more local engagement”.
He says that PlaceShapers, which has 109 members, currently is open to new members joining, but does not have “an active campaign to grow”. “I’d rather just have the people who want to be with us, with us,” he says.
Regeneration is a preoccupation among PlaceShapers members, and Mr Walker says he was “thrilled” by the news in June that grant funding from Homes England’s Affordable Homes Programme can now be used on regeneration projects. This funding is “absolutely critical for sites around the country,” he says, adding if another regeneration opportunity arose for Leeds Federated, he “absolutely would” apply for funding.
Often regeneration projects involve delicate issues around when, how and where residents are decanted, as well as who gets offered a home on the replacement scheme. What is the best way to approach this?
“Engaging with the local community,” states Mr Walker. On previous schemes, he has strived to ensure “the residents were quite heavily involved in the design”.
He says he is committed to communicating with them “what’s happening when they’re not happy. With the best will in the world, there are always examples of where something happens and people aren’t happy”. However, he adds: “If you don’t tell people what’s going on, their own truth, invariably, is worse than reality. So you might as well tell them the reality.”
We visit Pemberton Road in Wakefield, a £10m regeneration scheme jointly developed by Leeds Federated and nearby housing association Wakefield & District Housing. A challenging site that had lain derelict since the mid-1980s, it now holds 82 homes – 45 for affordable rent and 37 for shared ownership.
Pemberton Road in Wakefield
● Leeds Federated delivered 23 homes for affordable rent, while Wakefield & District Housing delivered 22
● Leeds Federated delivered 20 homes for shared ownership, while Wakefield & District Housing delivered 17
● The average first tranche bought by shared ownership buyers was 47%
● Seven local construction apprenticeships were created during the development of the scheme
“We could have put [the site] to the market, but if you get an RP [registered provider] on site, you’re guaranteed a good build,” says Clare Elliott, service director at Wakefield Council. Leeds Federated purchased the land from Wakefield Council in 2020.
Mr Walker sits cross-legged on the floor as we listen to renters Ian and Shelley Hannon, who were forced into temporary accommodation after their landlord put their home of 10 years on the market.
“We’ve been in some dark places over the past four years,” Mr Hannon explains, but their Leeds Federated home has lifted “a huge weight” off their shoulders.
Mr Walker seems invigorated by this interaction. “I get a kick out of knowing what I do is helping improve people’s lives,” he says. “[Most tenants will] probably never meet me… [but] I get enormous job satisfaction.”
This is despite the fact that, like many senior figures in the sector, he “fell into housing by accident”. He qualified as an accountant, then worked for Leeds-based student housing organisation Unipol until, in 1998, the job of finance manager at Leeds Federated came up.
“I knew nothing about housing,” Mr Walker says.“I thought I’ll do that for a little while and then go on to something else.”
Within six months, Mr Walker became finance director. Four years later, he became acting chief executive, then applied for and secured the permanent role.
Rising development costs and the social rent cap have created tough choices for housing associations, but the biggest long-term financial dilemmas are posed by net zero, he says.
Regarding energy efficiency, Mr Walker says that “we’ll build to building standards that are required today” rather than cutting-edge eco homes, then invest the savings into improving the energy efficiency of older stock. “I know some people don’t agree with that,” he adds, including other PlaceShapers members.
In July, the Conservatives’ victory in the Uxbridge by-election was widely attributed to a backlash against London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone green charge. Eyeing a successful campaigning strategy, the government has indicated that it is considering relaxing some of its net zero targets. Mr Walker, however, thinks such targets are helpful. “It’s a level playing field for everybody,” he says. “We all have to get to EPC [Energy Performance Certificate Band] C by 2030. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have that provision within their business plan.”
The broader issue, he continues, is what you do between 2030 and 2050. Leeds Federated did a stock condition survey with Savills that suggested its upgrade costs during that period would amount to £80m.
In numbers
4.4k
Social homes Leeds Federated Housing Association owns across West Yorkshire
109
Housing association members that are part of PlaceShapers
Assuming prices come down and factoring in grants, the landlord has priced £40m for green improvements into its business plan, which it would “just about survive”. This is why “us and other associations are now at V2 [rating for financial viability] rather than V1”.
As part of its new corporate plan, due to be launched in September, PlaceShapers is looking to create a working group of chief executives to decide on a campaign for the forthcoming general election. The plan is to work out “three or four things” that members want the government to focus on, Mr Walker says, “whether that’s red or blue”. He adds that PlaceShapers is trying to build its relationship with Labour, including shadow housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook.
Mr Walker supports the National Housing Federation’s request for a long-term housing strategy and Inside Housing’s drive for the next government to build social.
“We build affordable rent homes because we have to,” he says. Leeds, he points out, has “a really good” Section 106 policy, where half of every scheme has to be social rent. “For our 150 homes a year, we build 50 social rent, 50 shared ownership and 50 affordable rent” – a relatively generous split given the levels of grant available for development.
“If we could only build social rent, I would,” Mr Walkers adds. “It just needs the funding.”
Two decades into his housing career, Mr Walker seems more motivated than ever. “I like the fact that by working hard, the quality of someone’s life goes up,” he says. “I don’t find it hard to get up in the morning.”
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