board members

Board members are recruited and annually assessed against an agreed set of skills and attributes. These are included in the Renewal and Succession Policy, which are reviewed at least every two years.

To find out what other directorships, boards and public positions that our Board members are on, please visit: register of board member interests | believe housing

The Board adopts the same values expected of our employees.

At believe housing we all agree to do the right thing:
for our customers
for our colleagues
for our business.

We are committed to ensuring that our Board reflects a breadth of perspectives, and experiences that support effective decision-making and strong governance. Reviewing Board diversity is part of our governance assurance framework and informs succession planning, recruitment and development.

Every year, we provide Board and Customer Voices members with the opportunity to disclose equality and diversity data. We do not publish or share any data that could be used to identify an individual.

We also contribute to the National Housing Federation’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion data tool, submitting data relating to our Board, customers, colleagues and executive team. This supports sector-wide benchmarking and helps us understand our diversity profile in a broader housing sector context.

2026 data collection

For 2025/26, nine of 10 non-executive Board members completed the survey.

The disclosure is taken at a point in time and is refreshed on an annual basis.

Highlights for 2026 data collection include:

• gender – women account for 33.3% of Board members, compared with 45.4% of colleagues and 59.7% of customers, indicating that female representation on the Board remains lower than both comparator groups
• age – the Board is concentrated in the 45-64 range, with no representation under 35, whereas under-35s represent 20.0% of colleagues and 16.2% of customers.

These comparisons will inform future succession planning and recruitment activity as believe housing continues to strengthen the diversity of its governance arrangements.

We also recognise that Board members bring valuable personal insight, lived experience and knowledge gained through their own lives and through the experiences of people close to them, including family members or others they live with or support, such as a person with a disability.

Our approach

believe housing embeds diversity and inclusion within its governance arrangements through:

• equality and diversity information used alongside succession planning to identify gaps and inform recruitment
• inclusive recruitment practices, including role profiles designed to attract a broad and diverse pool, use of external search support where appropriate, and a focus on widening access and removing barriers
• Board Trainee Programme offering people from all backgrounds the chance to gain board-level experience and develop the skills to influence decision-making in the housing and community sectors.

We will continue to update and review the Board’s diversity profile and use the National Housing Federation Equality, Diversity and Inclusion data tool to understand how it compares with our comparison with workforce and customer profile information.