Catherine Farrington is an Associate at Campbell Tickell. She spent 5 years as executive lead for regulation and assurance, following 10 years working in legal roles with the Regulator of Social Housing and Homes and Communities Agency.

Director of Corporate Services and company secretary 

For a large housing group with responsibility for legal, governance and business assurance teams.

• Led on regulatory engagement, including shortly after arrival the recovery of the group’s governance rating from G3 to G1 and the maintenance of G1 in a subsequent assessment.
• Additional ad hoc engagement with the Regulator involved issues such as fire risk compliance and the lender covenant risk presented by a major contractor insolvency shortly before year end.
• Led two governance reviews, trained board members on the requirements of the Regulator and the board’s responsibilities.

Head of Legal at the Regulator of Social Housing

Providing advice on all aspects of its remit, including governance and policy, regulatory engagement and regulatory compliance.

Senior lawyer at the Homes and Communities Agency

Leading on corporate matters, including contracts and information law and all aspects of property and funding agreements.

Extensive experience of leading teams

Notably developing in-house legal services to address reputational and operational risk and improve efficiency, particularly in connection with disrepair and service charge cases. She also led a restructure of the team which removed a layer of leadership, promoted two in-house colleagues who, under her leadership, then led a series of improvements to the service and reduced cost to the organisation.

Led successful improvement projects

In addition to mobilising the organisation-wide response to restoring a G1 rating, she sponsored a successful data governance project in support of a major IT project. She also co-led a project to move a SHPS/TPT pension liability to an in-house pension trustee, only the fourth such project in the sector and one which substantially reduced the risk to repaying the pension debt.

Catherine holds a degree in law and qualified as a solicitor before joining the then Homes and Communities Agency.

Key services: Regulation/Governance/Risk and Assurance/People and change management