Controversy
In September 2003, the group suffered a crisis in governance, with a damaging row between board members and chief executive David Cowans over the latter's pay during a time of rapid growth. The group's regulator, the Housing Corporation, placed it into supervision until July 2004, appointing additional board members and imposing other sanctions. Cowans is among the sector's highest-paid executives, and his pay attracted further media attention in 2005 after a backdated pension settlement.
In 2010 the high salaries of housing association executives drew criticism from the incoming government, in particular that the second highest paid executive at a housing association was the chief executive of Places for People, earning £297,000 per year.
Read more about this topic: Places For People
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)