This article was published in October 2022.
We're celebrating success after winning two top awards at this year’s Kent Housing Group Excellence Awards, which celebrates the ‘exceptional and truly outstanding people and projects’ in Kent and Medway.
Head of Housing Julie Terry, who was described as being “supportive of her team, compassionate to residents and able to flex and take strategic and individual decisions”, received the Excellent Housing Professional award. 
Julie’s housing career started in 2002 when she took a part-time role in West Kent’s debt collection team. Two years later she became a trainee housing officer and then housing manager. In November 2020 she became interim Head of Housing Services before becoming permanent in June 2021 with responsibility for tenancy management, lettings and void management, community safety, legal services as well as income and financial wellbeing. All this while also managing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Julie’s empathetic and compassionate management has been honed by her own life experiences. Prior to joining West Kent, she moved into social housing at a time when she needed a roof over her head.
Julie commented: “It is important to have respect and kindness towards people because you never know what’s really going on. We have great people working at West Kent, we work as a team with the same goal to provide quality homes and excellent services.”
The Kent Housing Group awards judging panel added: “This award recognises not just a figurehead in their own organisation, but in housing as a whole.”
There was further success for our development team when we were named winner in the Excellence in Development and Regeneration category for our impressive development, Faversham Lakes.
The development, delivered in partnership between West Kent and Anderson Group, expands on the concept of boundless living, with 330 contemporary homes embracing spacious open-plan living as well as the idea of bringing the outside in, with generous gardens and all within walking distance of the landscaped parkland.
The development offers excellent transport links, education provision and community assets which all tie into the ethos of “room to grow, room to play, and room to live”.
The Kent Housing Group awards judging panel said: “Any development is about embracing the new, but it can also be about fusing it together with the old. This scheme stood out in an incredibly competitive category because of its redevelopment of a disused quarry, its clear engagement, its enhanced community facilities and the way it embraces its surroundings, sitting among the former Oare gunpowder works and many listed buildings. These homes have been carefully designed and despite an urban setting, create a relaxed countryside feel. Biodiversity gains and opportunities to explore nature went hand-in-hand with the development. A visually pleasing and thoroughly considered scheme.”