Executive Directors
Appointed February 2012.
Carol Matthews took up her post as Group Chief Executive of Riverside in February 2012, following five years as Chief Executive of Guinness Northern Counties, part of the Guinness Partnership.
Originally from Glasgow, Carol’s career began in housing with Sheffield City Council as a management officer collecting rent door to door and managing a patch. She also worked for Burnley and Bristol Councils prior to joining Northern Counties in 1993, ultimately becoming Chief Executive in 2007.
Carol sat on the Board of the National Housing Federation for seven years and is still involved at a regional level. She also served on the Audit Commission’s National Housing and Regeneration panel. She also Chaired H4N from 2018 to 2020
John Glenton took over as the Executive Director for Care and Support in April 2016, following three years as Director of Operations. John has more than 25 years’ experience in the care and support sector.
John’s career began as a Support Worker and has held various management roles over the past 20 years covering business development, strategy and operations.
Ian joined the Riverside Group May 2014 and is responsible for the maintenance of our homes as well as the Group's wholly owned subsidiary contractor, Evolve. He also serves as an interim member of Riverside’s Customer Experience Committee.
After initially beginning his career as a student surveyor with Manchester City Council, Ian has subsequently worked for Midland Heart, Parkway Green, Regenda Group, Guinness Northern Counties and Harvest Housing Group.
Ian is also a Non-Executive Director for the ForViva Group based in the North West.
Cris joined Riverside as Chief Financial Officer in March 2018.
Cris started her career with KPMG in Liverpool and brings with her twenty years of experience, over half of which has been in the social housing sector and includes The Guinness Partnership. In addition Cris brings with her a wealth of experience from other organisations such as Serco and Transport for Greater Manchester.
Patrick New joined The Riverside Group Limited as Executive Director of Customer Service in February 2019.
Patrick has 30 years’ experience working in regulated service industries and over 15 years’ experience at Director/ Executive level. Most recently, he worked as Retail Managing Director and Board Director for Ecotricity, a renewable energy company, and was accountable for all aspects of end-to-end customer journeys. Patrick has a track record of success in multi-site customer service leadership, nationwide operations management and various commercial directorate roles at British Gas, Dyno Rod and Royal Bank of Scotland. He has also been a Non-Executive Director of Smart Energy GB.
Patrick brings with him a wealth of experience. He has a passion for leading and developing people and providing great customer service.
Tony joined One Housing in 2018 with over 10 years experience of enabling business strategy through effective technology solutions. As CIO he led the One Future programme of modernisation and transformation within One Housing, a 3 year programme of significant change to all business areas supported by data improvements and technology modernisation. This included a suite of digital services to help improve customer services and deliver business efficiencies.
This CIO role also included executive responsibility for IT Operations, Data Governance and Business Intelligence, and more latterly, People Services. Prior to One Housing, Tony was IT Director at Sovereign Housing Association, after holding the senior IT role at a number of housing organisations. His private sector experience includes leading the early adoption of eLearning and Customer Relationship Management technology within the private education sector.
Tony is has a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town and various post graduate certifications in project management and business leadership.
Jehan joined as Managing Director of One Housing and part of Riverside’s executive Team in September 2023. Prior to joining he worked for the Wheatley Group in Scotland where he held the role of Managing Director of Customer Experience. He was also MD of Wheatley Homes Glasgow for the bulk of his time at Wheatley, which is Scotland’s largest housing association (45,000 homes). Jehan worked for L&Q for over 16 years between 2002-19, where he held a number of roles relating to regeneration, mergers, stock transfers, operations and community investment. His last role at L&Q was Regional Operations Director. In his time at L&Q he was involved in the mergers of East Thames and Ujima.
Prior to his career in housing Jehan also worked for IBM Global Services Ltd and the Office for National Statistics. Jehan holds degrees in Sociology (University of Reading) and Comparative Social Policy (University of Oxford).