The combined expertise of our Board Members and Management Team enables us to take a well-rounded approach to understanding the needs of people and communities, helping us create lasting positive impact.
Community Homes - Who We Are
We are proud of our dedicated and dynamic team, who are not only experts in their fields but committed to delivering meaningful social impact
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Yashar Turgut is a Fellow of the ICAEW with over 40 years of executive leadership and two decades of non-executive governance experience across the housing and social infrastructure sectors. He has experience as a non-executive director of a national housing organisation, contributing to finance, audit, commercial, and pension governance. He also spent nearly a decade as chair of a property services company, overseeing maintenance delivery for housing association partners.
Yashar is currently the chair of One Manchester (a registered provider that owns and manages over 12,000 homes), a position he has held for over four years. In this role, he combines deep strategic expertise with a strong commitment to social value and inclusive community development. His leadership is defined by a focus on service improvement, organisational growth, and community impact.
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Léann is a former housing association Chief Executive, a NED/Chair on two housing boards and a board advisor for other organisations in the sector. She has over 20 years’ experience across social housing, care and support services and manufacturing businesses. She has supported and led organisations to strengthen governance, culture and performance, while maintaining a clear focus on social impact and customer experience.
Her background includes leading large and complex organisations through transformation and organisational change, rebuilding partnership and culture, and delivering sustainable performance improvement. Léann brings deep insight into the priorities and realities facing social housing providers and local authority partners, alongside a collaborative and pragmatic style.
She is a professionally qualified executive coach and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) practitioner, and was named Housing Woman of the Year in 2024 in recognition of her work in mentoring and supporting emerging leaders across the sector.
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Don McLure is a CIPFA-qualified public accountant with over 40 years of senior leadership experience in local government finance and corporate services. He has held Management Team roles including Strategic Director of Resources at Durham County Council and Corporate Director of Resources at Derby City Council. He also worked for Hull City Council and Milton Keynes in similar roles as an Interim.
His career has involved many leading major capital investment programmes including an Arms’ Length Management Organisations (ALMO) for council housing in Derby and a stock transfer in County Durham.
In recent years, he has also dedicated significant time to voluntary and charitable work.
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Chris Neill is a property and housing professional with extensive experience across residential development, estate management, and social housing governance. He began his career at Knight Frank, becoming Head of Residential Development for the Northwest, where he advised major developers on regeneration projects across Manchester and Liverpool. He later founded Base Estate Management, growing it to manage over 7,500 units and £12 million in annual service charge funds before leading its successful acquisition. As Chair of Arcon Housing, he oversaw a major modernisation programme and was instrumental in its strategic merger with Bolton at Home, a 20,000-home registered provider.
The Management Team
Our Management Team brings together extensive operational, commercial and sector expertise to support the Board in delivering our strategic objectives. Working closely with the Board and Advisory Panel, they provide the leadership, insight and day-to-day oversight needed to deliver high-quality homes, services and sustainable communities.
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Robin is dedicated to advancing the pivotal role of genuinely responsible private capital to amplify the valuable work of public sector partners and rebalance equality of opportunity across the UK. An advocate and keen adopter of an open architecture approach, Robin is focussed on working closely with the public sector to crowd in private expertise and balance sheets to collaboratively tackle head-on the challenges seen across the social infrastructure space.
With over 17 years across international finance, Robin’s most recent role saw successful development of social infrastructure financing products in the UK and EEA, with a particular focus on social and affordable housing. His prior experience involved oversight & development of a large asset-backed issuance platform, structuring financing for government entities and strategic corporations alongside multilateral development banks (the World Bank, International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, African Trade Insurance Agency). Robin has a core focus on establishing robust risk and control frameworks to deliver successful business models and has led on, and contributed, to development and implementation of business strategy, business creation, growth and product development.
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Joel Manley is an experienced management consultant, motivated by a commitment to help tackle the UK’s housing crisis through innovative and scalable solutions. He has a proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams, and of delivering complex, multi-stakeholder projects.
Before co-founding the Community Foundations platform, Joel spent 17 years advising global investment banks, asset managers, and private wealth clients across Europe and Asia. His work focused on business transformation, trading COO functions, and regulatory change, where he successfully led international programmes on LIBOR transition, Brexit readiness, and margin reform.
Drawing on this background, Joel brings a deep understanding of operational excellence, strategic delivery, and a commitment to delivering value for clients.
Past clients include Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale, HSBC, UBS, Citi, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
CONTACTWhether you want to explore an opportunity or learn more about how we’re making a positive impact across the UK, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
