IT Director – Grand Union Housing Group

A bit from Simon

Innovative leader with a sense of humour, once described as the Peter Kaye of Housing (although I’m from Stoke not Bolton)

I’ve been working in the housing IT world for more than 24 years where hopefully I’m well known for solving more problems with than causing but this maybe one for my current team. I started out making sure the housing management systems used in 1999 were able to cope with 00 rather than 2000 (if you know you know) and a world where Dynamic’s was a marketing campaign by Renault rather than Microsoft. I’ve seen a lot of change over the years but equally scary worked on some of the same systems since the beginning of my career. A positive of which means that I have dealt with some of the great characters and hard working people that sell, implement, support and have listened to me “barking” loudly sometimes about what the frustrations are regarding the IT offer for housing.

Why do you care about housing

First stop house, next stop home. All the social housing providers I have worked with provide good quality houses that people have the chance to make a home. This is something that a number of people take for granted at times.

To finish and live up to my Peter Kaye alter ego my favourite joke of all time has to be “there were 2 peanuts up an alley, one was “assaulted” (“a salted” just in case)

What we at Digital Bark think about Geraint.

Simon is so experienced and well respected in the sector that we are so chuffed to have him as a friend of Digital Bark. His humour is legendary, and perhaps we should arrange a Digital Bark stand-up evening. Humour aside, Simon is a lovely bloke and has done the sector proud for many years.