Alan is a housing manager with 40 years experience working in the social housing environment. He has been a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing for over 30 years, and has a Diploma in Housing Studies and a degree in Public Policy.

Working for a local authority in Scotland until 1991, Alan moved to Hampshire to work within the homelessness sector. He chaired the Hampshire Homeless Group between 1995 and 1997, before starting a new job as a housing manager with a Kent local authority in 1999.

Alan was one of the first winners of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister sponsored Homeless Champions, for his innovative work in transforming housing registers to prevent homelessness. He is credited as being the first council in Southern England to move from a points-based scheme to introducing banding to housing registers.

In 2008 Alan become manager of the largest Choice-Based Lettings partnership in the UK, and successfully grew the organisation, introducing efficiencies and improving self-help for customers. He then became Business Operations Manager of a not-for-profit social housing IT company. During his 4 years there the company successfully doubled their number of client local authorities.

Alan has been a director of his own social housing consultancy for the last 5 years. During this time he has worked with local authorities to produce their homelessness strategies and review their Housing Allocation policies. More recently he has coordinated rough sleeping services across 2 neighbouring councils in Kent.