Man at the top
New CIH president
Paul Diggory tells
Caroline Thorpe
about Gordon
Brown, rock
climbing and
Liverpool FC
Paul Diggory is depressed. Liverpool are
days away from clashing with (and, it turns
out, losing to) AC Milan in the European
Cup final, and he doesn’t have a ticket to
the match in Athens.
‘I think the CIH should have arranged
a study tour,’ moans the Anfield seasonticket holder.
You get the impression that the
otherwise eager and chatty Mr Diggory is
rarely glum. He’s clearly excited by the fact
that next week he will become president
of the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Today he must make do with being
chief executive of North Wales Housing
Association and the CIH vice-president.
Admittedly, he’s no ordinary vicepresident. He’s effectively been doing the
top job since December when Janet Hale,
elected CIH president last June, resigned
to become a director of the institute’s new
commercial arm, Consult CIH.
‘It’s not what I would have planned,’
admits Mr Diggory. ‘You expect to have
a full year’s vice-presidency to break
yourself in gently and learn about
different things and I haven’t quite
had that.’
Despite being one of just three CIH
vice-presidents to have been thrust
into presidential life prematurely,
Mr Diggory is sanguine. He praises the
support he’s had both from the CIH and
his own housing association staff at North
Wales, and is clearly taken with his early
immersion into the role of roving housing
ambassador, all trips to far-flung climes
and ‘tripartite’ conferences.
It’s a long way from the school leaver
who wanted to be a planner. ‘There, I’ve
admitted it now, there’s no going back,’
he laughs. Though his early ambition was
thwarted after letters to all the councils in
his native Shropshire failed to win him a
planning job, he did get a place with ten
or so others on Wrekin Council’s trainee
scheme.
‘They were quite broad-thinking,’ he
remembers. ‘The model was that each
of us that was taken on spent a month in
every department. And we spent a month
in another organisation, and we spent a
month on an outward bound course.’
He says he came back from four weeks’
rock climbing and abseiling in Ullswater
‘fantastically fit’, but ‘I didn’t really get
why they’d sent us’. Only later did he
realise he’d had his first taste of the
Out with the old,
in with the new
‘His legacy was summed up by the advert
for his replacement which was to increase
the membership [from 14,000] to
20,000 members,’– on outgoing chief
executive David Butler
‘She’s widely seen as a real expert in the
policy field, but this job is a little bit more
than that. She demonstrated to us that
she’s got a really strong vision for where
the CIH is going’ – on current deputy and
incoming chief executive Sarah Webb.
importance of investing in staff training
and development, something the CIH
majors on and which he is now keen to use
his presidency to push further.
‘It’s important that we listen not just
to our own membership, but to people
beyond the membership. We should try
and make the best use of the talent we’ve
got and help all those people working
in housing to more fully realise their
potential,’ he says.
Early learning
He has continued to learn throughout
his own career. Deciding at Wrekin that
housing was for him (‘no two days seemed
the same, which I can say all these years
later is probably an understatement’),
in 1979 he moved on to the Telford
Development Corporation, letting homes
in the new town.
Tenants would receive a comprehensive
welcome pack, detailing the property’s
dimensions down to how the heating
worked. Fresh from the council, Mr
Diggory thought this wasteful at first. ‘It
completely escaped me that people loved
it because they’d never been used to
getting such help,’ he says.
So how would he apply his lessons
from 1970s new town Telford to, say, the
current government’s proposals for five
new eco-towns? ‘My immediate reaction
is that it’s quite exciting,’ he says. But he
wants to see the proof of the pudding. ‘I
think we’re in an era where we do like to
see models of good practice and things
working to be convinced of their value.’
Indeed, now that he has reached the
top Mr Diggory intends to make sure the
CIH is consistently up there giving the
government a steer on how it should be
doing housing.
‘This is quite a key year,’ he considers.
‘There’s change at the top of the key
organisations. You’ve got Communities
England coming in, ourselves and various
others [will be under new
leadership] and within that each
organisation will no doubt be reviewing
things and looking at them differently.’
There’s also the shift in national
leadership to consider, and its impact on
the housing minister’s approach, he says.
‘Gordon Brown and Yvette Cooper seem
to be adopting a very clear stance about
the role of affordable housing, and it really
looks as if housing could be much higher
up the agenda than it was before.’
But Mr Diggory is wary of declaring
housing the new political zeitgeist,
recalling Ms Cooper’s speech at last year’s
Harrogate conference. ‘She was talking
about it being a really exciting year for
housing. And you could say, has that
happened in the last year?’ he asks.
‘From a personal perspective it feels like
it’s been quite an exciting year, but I’m on
the inside and tied up with it. And I’m not
sure that you’d say that it has been. I think
many of the problems we face are the
same but maybe magnified a little.’
Keen that this year’s promise doesn’t
go the same way, the new president has
already pencilled in a meeting with the
Communities secretary to talk about
taking forward the findings of John Hills’
report on social housing.
‘What we’ll be saying to Ruth Kelly
is that, as the professional body for
people working in housing and with our
relationship with other related professions
and disciplines, we’re ideally placed to
help the government. We can take issues
forward and develop some of the themes
for them.’
And he says that both he and Sarah
Webb, second-in-command at the CIH but
due to take over from David Butler as chief
executive in the autumn, share a vision of
beefing up the institute’s clout in Europe.
‘We’re part of Europe, and we’re not as
attracted to influencing housing in Europe
and learning from housing in Europe as
people in, say, Asia Pacific, South Africa,
Australia and New Zealand.’
With international expansion on the
institute’s mind, Mr Diggory’s passport is
set for considerable stamping. Though it
will come too late for Liverpool FC’s Athens
showdown, when I talk to Mr Diggory
after the event, his customary optimism is
returning fast.
‘I’m a little subdued, but recovering
rapidly,’ he says. ‘Of course the football
fan’s logic is to insist it would have been
different if I’d been there. Sad, isn’t it?’
● Paul Diggory will officially open the
Chartered Institute of Housing’s annual
conference in Harrogate on Tuesday
CV: Paul Diggory
COLIN MCPHERSON
2007/08 President, Chartered Institute of Housing
2006/07 Vice president, Chartered Institute of Housing
2000 to date Chief executive, North Wales Housing Association
1996/2000 Chief housing officer, Conwy Council
1989/96 Chief housing officer, Delyn Council
1983/89 Deputy chief housing officer, Chester City Council
Senior housing officer
1979/83 Lettings officer, Telford Development Corporation
1974/79 Administrative trainee, Wrekin Council
56 Inside Housing 15 June 2007
15 June 2007 Inside Housing 57