A FORMER director of a West Norfolk housing association has been named as the new Managing Director of Roddons Housing Association. Christopher Smith starts his new job on Monday.

A FORMER director of a West Norfolk housing association has been named as the new Managing Director of Roddons Housing Association.

Christopher Smith starts his new job on Monday and replaces interim Managing Director Maggie Sherlock, who was in office since September when Pauline Ford moved to Merton Priory Homes in London.

Mr Smith has been in social housing for nearly 15 years and started his career at Broadlands Housing in Norwich.

More recently he was Director of Housing at Freebridge Community Housing, following a stock transfer from the Borough Council of King's Lynn at West Norfolk where he was head of housing management.

Whilst at Freebridge, Mr Smith oversaw a range of service improvements and the delivery of transfer promises to residents and maintained an excellent partnership with the council on a range of activities from tackling homelessness to community development and regeneration.

In his most recent role Mr Smith was Director of Housing and Support at Merlin Housing Society in South Gloucestershire, but has been keen to return to East Anglia.

Mr Smith said: "I am really looking forward to returning to the area and using my skills and expertise to lead the team at Roddons onto this next stage of our exciting journey.

"I've been really impressed with the tremendous results that have already been achieved in such a short space of time at Roddons. We are in an excellent position to build on these results, delivering the housing and community activities we have promised."

Brenda Reynolds, chairman of the Roddons Board, said: "It has been a really interesting and rigorous recruitment process for us to find someone with the right skills and commitment to lead the team at Roddons.

"We were all really impressed with Christopher and his broad range of skills and experience.

"Most of all his passion for our mission to enhance Life Chances really shone through, and it is going to be great working with him to continue to deliver against our promises in the area.