Jonathan Driffill
Jonathan is Managing Director of Friendship
Care and Housing. He joined Friendship in 1996, originally
appointed as Director of Housing and Neighbourhoods, responsible
for managing Friendship’s locality based housing services,
neighbourhood renewal and strategy and regeneration.
He was appointed as Friendship’s Managing
Director in 2004.
Jonathan is a member of Longhurst Group’s
Executive Management Team and a member of the Birmingham Social
Housing Partnership (BSHP) Executive team. He currently chairs the
Birmingham Race Action Partnership (brap). Jonathan is also
chairman of Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC), one of the
largest voluntary sector support organisations in the UK, as well
as the Derby Social Housing Forum.
Jonathan joined Friendship from Walsall City
Challenge, where he worked as Projects Manager, having gained
previous experience in economic development and urban regeneration
with various local authorities in the Midlands.
He takes great pride in the work which
Friendship undertakes within the communities it serves;
indeed, the successful neighbourhood regeneration of a Friendship
housing estate in Derby remains one of his proudest
achievements to date. For Jonathan, having the ability to directly
influence and improve the quality of people’s lives is what he
enjoys most about his job. His ambition is to ensure Friendship
becomes one of the UK’s top performing organisations, for the
benefit of staff and customers alike.
He is extremely proud of the dedication,
enthusiasm and efforts of his team. And as a great advocate of
communication, Jonathan strongly believes that the only way to
genuinely offer service excellence is by regularly consulting and
listening to what staff and customers have to say; he makes it
his business to catch up regularly with his front line staff,
customers and service users throughout the year at scheduled
drop-in sessions.
Jonathan said: “Friendship does a lot of
things very well, often with very limited resources, but I’m not
complacent; there will always be room for improvement and it’s my
job to make those improvements happen
Jonathan is a prolific spokesman, delivering
presentations on many topics including worklessness, financial
inclusion, employment and training, partnership working,
neighbourhood regeneration and equality and diversity. As an
industry leader on social housing issues Jonathan thrives on lively
debate.
Whilst he enjoys good company, fine food and
wine, and world travel, Jonathan also takes pleasure in some
traditional pursuits; as a season ticket holder he can be regularly
found at Aston Villa FC fixtures, on the water’s edge enjoying a
spot of fishing or in his local pub, partaking in the odd
pint.