Our team

Following a successful career in senior management roles within public housing and local government, Mark established Pennington Choices in 2000 and now divides his time between managing Pennington as a thriving and growing national housing consultancy and working in a consultancy capacity for clients.

A widely experienced consultant, Mark has worked with numerous clients to manage change, improve services, bring about new investment or deliver projects to a high standard.  Mark leads on business development activities, the management of health and safety and quality assurance matters for Pennington corporately, as well as line managing the gas and electrical consultancy and energy performance certificate parts of Pennington.

Mark has specialist expert knowledge in housing finance and as such leads both Pennington's team of finance consultants and finance related arrangements.  Previous arrangements have included advising on HRA finance including subsidy and business planning; RSL business planning and stock investment planning; financing new development and regeneration projects including prudential borrowing and undertaking service based value for money reviews. 

Chantelle's role at Pennington Choices primarily involves the undertaking of housing consultancy projects and senior level interim management roles in housing and property services; change management and service improvement work; executive recruitment and HR support; service reviews, and strategic planning. 

She has specific and extensive expertise in managing property services including managing in-house repair teams, delivery of planned works, budget setting, service reviews and improvement action plans in interim management posts.

Chantelle's current position is as Interim Head of Property Services at Wrexham Council, with previous roles at Adactus as Deputy Chief Executive, the National Housing Federation, and for Riverside Group as Divisional Director Liverpool. She moved to Kensington Regeneration, Liverpool's New Deal for Communities Pathfinder as Interim Chief Executive, then spent a year with Liverpool City Council as Head of Housing. 

Tony's role at Pennington Choices as Project Manager is specialising in the procurement of new residential property and leading the delivery of professional reporting on accessibility and fire risk.

Tony's specific experience spans a number of areas, including development advice for project funders, undertaking ‘in-house' roles in project management for clients as well as being an Employers Agent.  He also provides clients with senior consultancy services for regeneration projects and has been retained as an Expert Witness by a Borough Council to advise on claims. 

Mark is the Surveying Manager for Pennington Choices and is responsible for managing the Building Surveying team. He is an experienced Chartered Surveyor and has direct responsibility for managing a diverse work base providing advice and consultancy to clients on project management, procurement, tendering and contract advice, cost management, and more tailored support in Building Pathology relating to Party Wall and neighbourly issues, defect reporting, design, Access Audits, and advice as an expert witness.

Mark has key responsibilities for developing and managing both new and established clients for Pennington Choices and ensuring that the team delivers a high quality product for all clients.  The majority of the projects have required Mark to undertake the role Project Manager; Contract Administrator; Designer; Cost Consultant; Interim Manager or CDMC.  He is also responsible for Health and Safety for the company.

As a Chartered Building Surveyor and Senior Asset Management Consultant at Pennington Choices, Gary has helped a range of Local Authorities and Registered Social Landlords to develop asset management strategies to meet their Decent Homes obligations and to deliver their DH programme. He has considerable experience in delivering large stock condition surveys, team management, project management, developing specifications, procurement and management of building maintenance and construction related contracts.  Gary's experience also includes Employer's Agent roles on a range of social housing new build developments for clients, in the North West and West Midlands, and supporting clients in the deliveries of their responsive repairs service

Gary has gained a solid defect diagnosis grounding spanning many types of building, and has also been trained to undertake access audits and fire risk assessments. Previous projects have included the implementation and utilisation of a cutting edge electronic data capture module including all relevant software and applications.  He has therefore become the expert user of our Asset Management Software, Keystone, and has also used other client AM software when required giving him a good rounded knowledge of Asset Management issues. 

Gary achieved MRICS status in 2010.

Fred provides strategic cost consultancy, quantity surveying and contract management services for social housing clients in support of both new build and refurbishment projects.  He provides support to the delivery of employer's agent roles and has extensive experience of providing services in a number of construction and regeneration sectors including, but not limited to, healthcare, commercial, and residential.  The value of the projects which has been involved with range from £500k through to £20m. 

As a direct result Fred has amassed a wide range of experience in respect of the different procurement routes and forms of contract utilised. This includes traditional procurement, utilising the JCT standard form of contract, through to a design and build procurement route, which often utilises the JCT with contractor's design form of contract. Fred has also been involved with the NHS Procure 21 strategy and its associated NEC 2 form of contract.

At present, Simon divides his time between running and undertaking stock condition survey programmes and Energy Performance Certificates for various clients.  He is also technical advisor for Pennington Choices in relation to Energy Performance Certificates for Domestic, Non-Domestic and Public Buildings.  Since joining Pennington in 2007, Simon has undertaken a number of industry recognised qualifications, including Diplomas in Domestic and Non-domestic Energy Assessment, and Display Energy Assessment. 

Simon's background lies within the Financial Sector starting his career as a trainee accountant for Ethel Austin responsible for store service charges.  From here he joined various organisations and ultimately worked his way through to Sales and Marketing Accountant, responsible for budgets in excess of £25 million.

Steve's role at Pennington Choices is to carry out quality assurance checks, water samples, new installation inspections, heat-loss calculations and post inspections. He also undertakes desktop audits of completed Gas Safety Certificates and second opinions on defective appliances and installations.  Steve attends regular meetings with clients and contractors to discuss findings and address any gas related issues. He also provides expert advice to clients regarding the recommendations made by contractors. 

He has completed several training courses since joining Pennington, including Team Leadership & Management, Lone Working, Health & Safety Management, Fire Safety and Risk Assessment and Asbestos Awareness. 

Steve is an experienced and qualified gas and breakdown engineer, having worked for a housing association and British Gas, where he gained invaluable experience of servicing and repairs of domestic gas appliances and central heating systems. 

James is a senior consultant at Pennington Choices, specialising in service delivery, organisational development, HR and business development issues.  Having come to the RSL world later on in his career, James has had a variety of roles since joining Pennington. He has worked with Gateshead Council on ensuring owner/occupiers were fully aware of improvements being made to their properties through grant funding. This involved a large deal of liaison between all parties concerned and eventually culminated in James getting owner/occupiers to sign up to the proposed changes.

James has also worked in Leek with Moorlands Housing as part of an accounting review.  His main task was to re-write the personnel budget for the next year in light of accountancy changes implemented by Pennington Choices.  He is currently acting as the Interim Member Services Manager for Procurement For All Group (PFA) Ltd. PFA is a national based consortia comprising of eleven RSLs with stock number in excess of 90,000 units. James has been instrumental in helping the membership identify their ongoing procurement requirements for the next five years.

 

During her time at Pennington Choices Becky has been responsible for all aspects of the office finances, including the sales and purchase ledgers, credit control, invoicing, preparing the annual budget, processing salary amendments, balancing all company bank accounts, maintaining an ‘Imprest' petty cash system and analysing and processing all personal & credit card expenses. 

Becky is also very involved with the EPC team and assists the EPC Manager by overseeing the day to day running of the operation.

Steve is an MCSE qualified IT professional and is responsible for managing and maintaining Pennington Choices IT network, ensuring a continuous and reliable service. 

He also undertakes data analysis and data management for various aspects of the option appraisal process including for sheltered housing services and as part of our need and demand analysis work. 

Steve has several years experience of analysing data relating to housing and support related services as well as having a detailed knowledge of data capture methods.

Kellie is responsible for managing the administrative and support team at Pennington Choices.  The admin team's tasks include arranging surveys and second opinions, collation and input of data and other ad hoc secretarial duties. 

Her role also includes the collation and return of tenders and pre qualification questionnaires as well as the production of reports.    In addition, she oversees the inputting of data and scheduling of reports, including carrying out quality checks. 

Kellie brings with her 17 years experience of providing secretarial and administrative support, with the past 10 years as Office Manager.