Meet our senior team
June Barnes
Group Chief Executive
June has been Group Chief Executive at East Thames for 11 years. In that time she has doubled the number of homes from 7,000 to 14,000 and increased the income base from £35million to just under £100million.
A trained town planner and member of the Chartered Institute of Housing, June has previously worked for a number of housing bodies focussing on housing development and regeneration, housing services and resident involvement. She has an active interest in creating sustainable communities and has been particularly concerned about how to create sustainable higher density housing developments.
June is a Board member of the National Housing Federation; a Board member of The Institute for Sustainability, Chair of Stratford Renaissance Partnership; and serves on the Tenant Services Authority’s providers panel. She has previously served on a number of Boards and working groups over the years concerned with the built environment and poverty and was Chair of the London Sustainable Development Commission from 2005-8.
Pamela Gardner
Director of Neighbourhood & Communities
Pamela has been with East Thames Group for more than 10 years in a variety of senior roles, including Assistant Director of Housing and Neighbourhood Services and Director of Social and Economic Regeneration . Pamela is currently responsible for all residents services within the Group, across all tenures and all subsidiaries - bringing together and driving best use of our resources, approach to customer services and service standards.
Pamela is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and is a competent and highly experienced housing and regeneration professional with over 20 years housing, social, economic and regeneration experience.
As well as her roles at East Thames, Pamela has been a Board member of West Ham and Plaistow NDC, Urban Buzz Sustainable Communities Programme and as she is currently Chair of Winsor Park Management Committee. In 2006, Pamela was appointed as a London Sustainable Development Commissioner with responsibility for providing advice to the Mayor of London on sustainability and economic issues.
Find out more about our resident services.
Suzanne Forster
Director of Finance
BA (hons), ACA, Certificate in Corporate Finance
Suzanne joined East Thames in early 2009 and is responsible for overseeing the finance and treasury functions as well as developing the Group’s financial strategies.
Suzanne has more than 18 years experience working directly with the affordable housing sector. Prior to joining East Thames she was an Executive Director at Tribal Treasury Services, where she specialised in various treasury initiatives and also provided financial expertise in an interim role to the Tenant Services Authority (TSA).
Suzanne has gained extensive senior management experience over a period of ten years in a variety of Finance Director and Deputy Chief Executive posts, including at Swan Housing Group and the Salvation Army Housing Association. During her time at Swan Suzanne was a member of the executive team responsible for managing a rapidly growing diverse group. At the Salvation Army HA she played a central role in improving financial viability.
Prior to undertaking these roles Suzanne was employed as a Regional Accountant within the Financial Regulation Team, based in the Merseyside office of (the then) Housing Corporation. Previously having trained within the Liverpool office of Pannell Kerr Forster, managing a number of audit clients including the major Merseyside based RSLs.
Geoff Pearce
Director of Development and Asset Management
Geoff joined East Thames in 2006 and is responsible for overseeing the Group’s development programme, regeneration projects and major asset management programme.
As a former local authority building surveyor, Geoff is passionate about buildings and places and providing excellent services to the people that live in them. Over the past 13 years he has worked on a number of challenging and high profile regeneration projects including stock transfers, brownfield redevelopments and estate regeneration projects.
Since joining East Thames, Geoff has continued to develop the organisation’s reputation for innovation and quality through a development programme of more than 1,750 homes ranging from small infill developments right through to major regeneration projects.
Geoff has also overseen East Thames’ significant stock investment programme of more than £30m in the last three years to bring the organisation’s housing stock up to the Decent Homes standard and beyond. He is currently involved in the Triathlon Homes partnership between East Thames, Southern Housing and First Base which will deliver almost 1400 affordable homes in the Athlete’s Village after the 2012 Olympic Games.
Geoff is a member of the NHBC Foundation Advisory Board and sits on the Housing Forum Demonstration Projects selection panel.
Find out more about what our development department are doing in east London and Essex.
Steve James
Interim Director of Support Operations
Steve has been at East Thames since May 2011, initially as Interim AD, Human Resources and more recently as Interim Director of Support Operations.
Steve has been a professional interim since 2006, working on large scale change projects in central and local government. He played a major role in the creation of the Border Agency and Child Maintenance Commission as well as merging three local authorities into a single unitary authority in Bedfordshire. Immediately prior to joining East Thames, Steve was part of the senior team leading a major transformation of London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Before becoming an interim, Steve was a Partner at Deloitte, where he was responsible for the HR function of the £1bn UK business, as well as being part of the wider global team that led the integration of Deloitte & Touche with Andersen.
