London, England, January 2025 – Clarion Housing Group has appointed Catrin Jones to the newly created role of Chief People, Data & Digital Officer, a position designed to bring together leadership of corporate services and the organisation’s digital, data and technology functions under a single strategic remit.
The move signals Clarion’s intent to accelerate its transformation agenda by aligning people strategy with digital capability and data-driven decision making. The organisation believes this integrated approach will strengthen how services are designed around communities and enable more joined-up, patch-based working across the country.
Clare Miller, Chief Executive of Clarion, described the appointment as a significant milestone. “Catrin’s appointment marks an exciting step forward for Clarion. By bringing together people, data and digital, we’re ensuring our technology works harder for our customers and colleagues, while embedding a culture of innovation and continuous improvement,” she said.
Jones is a long-standing leader within Clarion, having spent over nine years with the organisation in a series of senior roles. She most recently served as Chief People Officer, and prior to that held responsibility as Group Director of Corporate Services, where she played a central role in modernising internal operations and governance. Earlier within Clarion, she led major change programmes as Director of Business Transition and Director of Customer Services, experiences that positioned her at the intersection of service delivery, technology adoption and organisational design.
Her broader career spans leadership roles across the housing, utilities and technology sectors. Before joining Clarion, Jones was Director of Customer Service at Affinity Sutton, where she oversaw large-scale customer operations. She previously served as Account Director at Advanced Field Solutions, Customer Strategy Director at UK Mail, and spent nearly five years as Head of Customer Service at Veolia Environmental Services UK, following an earlier leadership role at Cleanaway. These positions established her reputation for using technology and process redesign to improve customer experience and operational resilience.
The creation of the new role reflects a wider shift across sectors, where digital transformation is increasingly understood as a people and culture challenge as much as a technical one. Clarion says that as AI and new tools reshape service delivery, strong leadership is essential to ensure technology enhances, rather than complicates, the work of frontline teams.
Under Jones’ leadership, Clarion has already begun using AI in practical ways – including enhanced knowledge tools, chatbots and automated call summaries – enabling colleagues to spend less time searching for information and more time supporting residents. The organisation credits her with significant progress over the past year in cyber security, governance and the implementation of new digital solutions.
Prior to this appointment, Jones led the implementation of Salesforce at Veolia and later played a key role in stabilising Clarion’s FF2 platform following its initial rollout, experiences that have shaped her approach to large-scale digital change.
Commenting on her new role, Jones said: “This is an incredible opportunity to ensure technology and people work together as effectively as possible. By aligning our people and digital strategies, we can unlock our potential to be both effective and efficient, with people at the centre of decision making.
“We will empower colleagues to deliver their best work and continue to improve customer experience. Our goal is to ensure the organisation has secure, resilient and usable tools that support our success, now and for the future. I am really looking forward to working with the new combined team to deliver this shared ambition.”
We are Clarion – the country’s largest housing association. We provide a home to 360,000 people nationwide. We build more than 2,000 new homes a year and through Clarion Futures (our charitable foundation) we provide opportunities for our residents to thrive – supporting people into work, improving neighbourhoods and focusing on sustainability.
We exist because there is a housing crisis in our country. There simply aren’t enough affordable and suitable places for people to live. You might have experienced this yourself, or have friends and family who have.
We believe having a home to call your own is fundamental to being able to access the right opportunities in life. That is why our mission is to provide homes for those who need them most.
We’re all driven by this shared purpose at Clarion. We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to build a better future, and we’re relentless in pursuing it.
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