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Boss of Scotland’s biggest housing association takes 60% pay cut
The chief executive of Scotland’s biggest housing association has taken a 60% pay cut, Inside Housing can reveal.
Steven Henderson, the boss of Wheatley Group, took home total pay of £80,000 in 2023-24, his first full year as chief executive. He did not take a bonus or car allowance.
The year before, in which he partially worked in his previous role as finance director, Mr Henderson earned £205,000 before tax and made a £75,000 donation to Wheatley Foundation, the group’s charitable arm.
Mr Henderson oversees a group that owns or manages 95,868 homes across Scotland and saw turnover of £412m in 2023-24.
Wheatley’s previous chief executive, Martin Armstrong, was paid £274,277 in 2022-23, his final year in post.
A Wheatley spokesperson told Inside Housing that Mr Henderson’s decision to take a pay cut for his new role was “a personal choice”.
Speaking to Inside Housing last year, Mr Henderson said that “public service and the ethos of that was always in my family”, adding that social housing “was in the blood”.
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His father, David, was a former head of housing at the Scottish Executive, the forerunner to the Scottish government.
Mr Henderson was finance director at Wheatley for nine years before being appointed chief executive in 2022. He joined the Glasgow-based landlord from the European Investment Bank, where he oversaw lending to housing providers across the continent.
He originally trained as a chartered accountant and worked with PwC and Ernst & Young, where he advised on Glasgow City Council’s housing stock transfer to what is now Wheatley Homes Glasgow.
Wheatley reported a 72% fall in surplus in its financial results for 2023-24, from £16.4m the previous year to £4.6m. This was largely due to a £7.4m rise in borrowing charges and an additional £2.7m in taxation costs.
Turnover fell 2.6% year on year as a result of a £20m reduction in new build grant income, partially offset by a £11m rise in core social housing lettings revenue.
The group completed 348 new homes in the year to 31 March, down on 644 the previous year. It expects to hand over 700 homes in 2024-25 and has a pipeline of 1,706 homes in development.
Wheatley increased overall spending on existing homes from £172.7m to £186m, including a 13% increase in repairs spending from £97.5m to £110.1m, while capital works remained steady at £75.9m.
Wheatley has built more homes for social rent than any landlord in the UK over the past 10 years, according to Inside Housing’s annual survey of the top developing housing associations. It completed 4,320 homes for social rent in the past decade.
Following the survey, Mr Henderson said: “I started with Wheatley 10 years ago and one of the first things I worked on was our first public bond issuance, which helped kick off all of those [homes].”
This was back in 2014. Wheatley raised £300m on the bond market – the first Scottish landlord to do so. It was to be part of a £1bn investment over 10 years.
Grant has also played a key role in Wheatley’s success. Social rent has been the primary tenure funded by the Scottish government in the past 10 years, and grant rates per home are higher than in England.
Update: at 11:00am, 27.09.24
The story was updated to clarify that 2023-24 was Mr Henderson’s first full year as chief executive and that he was paid £205,000 the year before. Wheatley’s previous chief executive, Martin Armstrong, earned £274,277 in 2022-23.
