L&Q, one of the UK's largest housing associations and developers, owning or managing over 120,000 homes for about 250,000 people in London, the South East and the North West.
L&Q is a housing association and residential developer, a not-for-profit landlord that provides homes to rent, shared ownership homes and homes to buy. Its website describes it as a leading housing association and residential developer, with customer service centres for repairs, rent payments and tenancy questions, an online MyAccount service for North West residents, L&Q Energy and L&Q Homes for resales and rentals. By the latest figures we could read, it owns or manages more than 120,000 homes housing about 250,000 people. Those figures date from 2021, so they may have changed.
The group's history page gives no formal mission statement. It says only that L&Q has been shaping diverse and dynamic regions for more than 60 years. The story starts in 1963, when Quadrant Housing Association was founded in Greenwich with 32 people each buying a £2 share. Its first property was on Wrottesley Road in Woolwich. According to Wikipedia, its founders were Rev Nicolas Stacey and Gospatric Home. In 1973 Quadrant merged with London Housing Trust to form London & Quadrant Housing Trust. The L&Q Foundation was launched in 2011 to fund local community projects.
L&Q's growth came through a series of milestones. It created Tower Homes in 1989 to move into low-cost home ownership, merged with East Thames Housing Group in 2016, and acquired Trafford Housing Trust in 2019 to expand into Greater Manchester. It operates in London, the South East, East Anglia and the North West and has its registered office in Stratford, east London. Subsidiaries have included Quadrant Construction Services and L&Q Living, which focuses on rented homes. The group's website was affected by a cyber security incident when we visited, so we could read only limited pages.
Fiona Fletcher-Smith became Group Chief Executive in 2021, following David Montague, who had been chief executive since 2008. Wikipedia reports over 2,800 employees in 2021. We did not find first-hand pages describing L&Q's working culture, so we are not describing it. Public criticism exists too: a 2023 Housing Ombudsman report found severe maladministration in some cases, which is part of the honest picture of the sector.
The roles in a landlord and developer like L&Q include housing and neighbourhood officers, repairs and maintenance teams, customer service staff, surveyors, development and planning specialists, sales and lettings staff, community investment workers, and finance, legal and technology teams. If you like the idea of combining property with public service, large housing associations are one of the biggest employers of property people in London. L&Q's website has a jobs portal and is the place to look for how its teams are arranged today.
Website: www.lqgroup.org.uk
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