Cornish housing charity welcomes three new Board Members

Coastline Housing has welcomed three new Non-Executive Directors to its Board to support the charity with its ambitious new four-year plan to build up to 1,200 new affordable homes and work with others to help solve the county’s housing crisis.

Kelly Kemp, Ben Treleaven and David Barlow have all been appointed and bring with them a wealth of experience and expertise across a number of sectors.

Kelly has been a customer of Coastline Housing for over nine years. While studying for a degree, she became interested in people’s lives and the way in which they access services available to them. It gave her an insight into external factors that can have a profound effect on lives, particularly on the younger generation and those who are exposed to difficult environments. She has academic knowledge of theories and the implementation of policies and procedures that can affect social housing.

Ben set up ISO Spaces with his business partner in 2012. It now delivers full turnkey housing solutions, focusing on social housing and temporary accommodation and was the number ten ranking on The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 in 2019, becoming the tenth fastest growing business in the UK. Ben is also the COO of Modular Mapper, and Finance Director of CargoTek. Over the past five years, he has worked with a range of housing associations, local authorities, charities and registered providers, for the design and delivery of various housing projects, building, delivering and installing over 1000 modular homes, in areas such as London, Milton Keynes and Cardiff. This has given Ben a real in-depth understanding of the housing crisis here in the UK, along with many ideas of how we can help to solve it.

David is a chartered accountant having trained and qualified with KPMG. He joined Penwith Housing Association prior to the transfer from the local authority in 1994 and was promoted to the position of Director of Finance in 1997. His final career position was LiveWest Director of Business Finance. He been involved in the provision and delivery of social housing services at Director level primarily within Cornwall for 25 years.

Chair of Coastline Housing, Mark Duddridge, said: “We are delighted to have made three such inspirational and exciting new appointments to our Board. The housing crisis impacts in many profound and unfair ways, perhaps most significantly by trapping people in poverty. We look forward to working with our new appointees, our current Board Members and colleagues and our other partners in Cornwall over the coming years to come together and make a real difference.”

Coastline, which currently owns and manages nearly 5,000 homes across the county has committed to growing its stock by over 20% in total over the next four years to help manage the ongoing housing crisis.

The charity currently stands as the eighth fastest growing developer of new affordable homes nationally. Last year in Cornwall, Coastline invested £34.5 million including almost £3 million of grant, from local and central government in the development of new properties.