Obituary: Louisa Clarke

Obituary: written by Steve Burrows.

Louisa Jane Clarke, the beloved wife of Simon Clarke and daughter of Roger Newell and Barbara Burrows, step-daughter of Steve Burrows and Gillian Newell, died aged 42 in Lincoln County Hospital on 28 October 2017 due to Neuroendocrine cancer.

Brought up by two sets of parents, and educated in Cambridgeshire, Louisa studied philosophy at Essex University, and upon graduating in 1996 declared that she was now “well qualified to consider her future unemployment”.

When she first started working following University she temped in Colchester for a life insurance company before moving on, in 1997, to temp as a receptionist and secretary for a small social landlord, Colchester Quaker Housing Association. She made a mark there, became a full-time employee, realised that if she was to be serious about working in social housing she needed to learn a bit more, and studied for the National Certificate in Housing Management and Maintenance.

She particularly enjoyed the financial management module, for which she was awarded a distinction - and found her career. In 1999 she started studying for the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s Chartered Accountant qualification.

In February 2000 she was appointed as finance assistant at CQHA, and in 2001 she became the finance manager, reporting to the chief executive. Alongside working full-time at CQHA she also completed her professional studies to become a chartered public finance accountant.

In 2004 she moved to a much larger organisation, Bradford Community Housing Trust, as finance manager for one of their four regions, but before the end of that year she became group finance manager, reporting to the head of financial services for BCHT.

In 2005 Louisa she stepped up to become head of financial services herself, and in 2007 she became the director of finance for BCHT, now known as Incommunities, providing around 22,000 dwellings.

In 2008 Louisa was named as one of ten “Future Leaders” in national awards run by Public Finance Magazine, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountancy, and Hays Accountancy; and the following year she was a finalist for Professional Woman of the Future in the national Women of the Future awards 2009.

Ultimately most high-flyers hit a ceiling, and Louisa decided that she needed to move on from Incommunities if she was to make more of a difference.

In 2010 she became finance director of Aldwyck Housing Group, but soon realised that her mandate was not as she had hoped, and by the end of 2011 she was on the hunt for another role.

Louisa became finance director of Boston Mayflower in 2012, and found an organisation where she could be content - somewhere which would give her scope to achieve more. In late 2014 she played a major role in the re-financing of Boston Mayflower with an innovative first for the UK social housing sector, a sterling bond for £150m and a private placement with a major US insurance fund for a further £15m. Thousands of Lincolnshire families will benefit from the rental homes built or maintained using this low-cost capital.

In 2015 Louisa was appointed as deputy chief executive of Boston Mayflower alongside her role as finance director, and in 2016 started working on the merger of Shoreline Housing and Boston Mayflower to create a larger and more efficient social housing provider for Lincolnshire.

Alongside her employments Louisa held at various times pro-bono roles, notably in the CIPFA Housing Advisory Network delivering masterclasses to her professional peers, as a board member of Horton Housing Association, and a board member and chair of the board of the charity DOSH.

In the space of a short career, prematurely terminated by a rare form of cancer, Louisa progressed in 10 years from being a temporary receptionist at one of the UK’s smallest social landlords to director of finance for one of the largest; and set about her personal mission, influenced by her early volunteering at a Cambridge shelter for homeless people, of improving accommodation for the poor and vulnerable in our society.

At Incommunities she devised and delivered the value for money strategy and framework which became the benchmark for VfM within regulated social housing providers, delivering multi-million pound efficiency improvement savings each year for the benefit of tenants in Yorkshire.

At Boston Mayflower she created a new model for the funding of social housing with the first bond issue in the regulated social housing sector, delivering low-cost capital for the building and maintenance of social housing and thereby reducing the cost of housing to thousands of tenants in Lincolnshire.

Louisa’s quiet but very major contribution to the affordability of social housing in the UK will have a lasting positive impact in making decent rental homes more affordable for the poorest and most vulnerable citizens of the United Kingdom.