Introducing your new shared ownership partner, Sparrow Shared Ownership

My name is David Avery and I am the chair of Sparrow Shared Ownership Ltd. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and the board of Sparrow and tell you about our plans as your new landlord and housing partner. You will have previously received letters from Alison Thain, the chair of Sage, consulting with you and informing you of the change in your landlord from Sage to Sparrow. 

This change happened on August 12 although you probably won’t have noticed anything different as you’ll still be receiving services and paying your rent to Sage in the usual way. We have entered into an agreement with Sage to continue this arrangement until we’re ready to consult with you again. More on that later!

The Sparrow board consists of four highly experienced housing sector professionals. They are myself, Amanda Davies, Sarah Wall and Andrew Rose. I have included a brief bio of each of the board members at the end of this article so you can see who we are in more detail. We'll shortly be adding a new board member who will chair our Audit and Risk Committee.

Over the coming months, we will be working hard to build out our organisation so that it looks like the Sage organisation that you currently deal with. As we progress, we’ll consult with you again about what you want as we get ready to take over from Sage in providing you with the services you currently receive.
In addition to the obligations we have to each other, Sparrow is also registered with the Regulator for Social Housing in England (RSH) and the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS).

We will comply with their standards and signpost you to them should anything ever go wrong. Again, this is no different to what Sage does now.

I have already had the opportunity to visit some of the developments where we have Sparrow homes and to meet residents. I hope that myself and the board will be able to make more visits in the near future. We're now searching for residents who’d like to join our Customer Scrutiny Panel so that we can hear directly from you on what you’d like from us, your thoughts and feedback on how we’re performing and what you would like us to do differently.

Thank you for your time, we are excited about the future and ensuring you get the service that you are entitled to expect from a responsible landlord.