On top of The hill

Having started as chief executive of London-based Notting Hill Housing Group three weeks ago, Davies will be overseeing a lot of changes. The first of these is the office in which we're sitting, which was built at her request in Notting Hill's previously open-plan headquarters. It's painted pale blue and hung with colourful William Morris prints from her old office at Servite Houses. It is necessary, she says, so she can work without distractions – "it would drive me mad if everyone was discussing what they had in their sandwiches".

But there are more serious transformations afoot. Last year was not a good one for Notting Hill, which is one of the country's foremost registered social landlords with 19,000 homes and a £179m development programme. Damning reports from the Audit Commission and Housing Corporation led to the resignation of long-standing chief executive Peter Redman in October.

Notting Hill is now hoping that Davies' approach to leadership, honed at excellent-rated, care-focused Servite Houses, will help it to regain its place in housing's big league and push through improvements, including those that Redman started.

Davies' £110,000-a-year appointment was heralded as a triumph for the sector's women workers and a step towards the Housing Corporation's target of female leadership at half the top 200 associations, but she says she was startled by the reaction.

"The day after I got offered the job, someone phoned me up and said, 'You're the woman with the biggest association in Britain – how does it feel?' I said, 'That can't be correct – what about Carol Radmore or Deborah Shackleton?' By turnover, it is the biggest, but in terms of permanent rented homes, it's not much bigger than Servite.

"This might be a man thing about size.

I wasn't thinking, 'I'm going to run a massive association'. The thing that really turns me on is the community development work, which Servite wasn't really able to do because it was spread all over the country, not concentrated in any area."

Board member Joanna Simons, who is chief executive at Sutton council by day, says this attitude was one of the reasons Davies got the job. "She really did stand out because of her visions and values, and because she's been very successful working with local authorities as well as housing associations. She is incredibly enthusiastic but she takes people with her."

Audit Commission lead inspector Ellis Blackmore adds: "Notting Hill doesn't want someone who's just a builder of houses. They've got to be committed to delivering good service to tenants and value for money."

Davies agrees. "Many associations are development and finance led and haven't paid enough attention to customer service," she says. "Perhaps I'm not as interested in development as some chief executives. I like good design and making good places to live but some of the intricacies of funding and planning I just find dull. My interests are much more around people, communities, families, health, quality of life and also what motivates people, how you get a diverse and successful social business."

Notting Hill missed out on a place in the Housing Corporation's elite group of long-term development funding partners, which Davies says was a "huge blow". But she's confident it will win promotion. "Notting Hill is a big player, it's relatively rich and the corporation would be mad to ignore us long-term. I'm committed to making enormous progress quickly, so I don't think it'll be too long before they'll let us back in.

"I'm hoping next year and if it takes a further year, so be it. But there's lots of things we can do with the resources we have." In fact, Notting Hill will still build 1558 homes up to March 2006, and will raise between £50m and £70m through selling commercial property and borrowing to meet the decent homes standard by 2009.

Notting Hill is a big player, it’s rich and the corporation would be mad to ignore us long-term. I don’t think it’ll be long before they let us back in

Building more homes in central and north London is one of Davies' aims for Notting Hill; work on community development and social exclusion are two others. But over the next two years, she will be concentrating on the RSL's internal problems.

In September 2003, it received two "amber lights" for governance and management from the Housing Corporation and in the same month, was one of several big RSLs caught out by a tougher Audit Commission regime. It was judged to have "scope for considerable improvement", the second lowest rating. When the commission's inspectors arrived in May 2003, Notting Hill had recently moved from a dispersed system of estate offices to a call centre, but there was little evidence of improvements in service or satisfaction. Davies must now finish the job.

"Before I started, I went to see the corporation's regulation director, Derek King, and got him to say what he thought the key issues were. They were: one, provide a better service to the customer; two, become more cost-effective and three, sort out governance," she says.

When we meet, Davies has been in the job for just a week-and-a-half, but she has already set up four project teams to look at cost effectiveness, customer service, governance and diversity. "In each team, I put people who have responsibility for delivering the service and others who help – finance and human resources, for example. Then I get a list of what has to be done, from the Audit Commission, the corporation, tenant surveys, work that consultants might have done – and create an action plan." But she adds: "I'm not into change for the sake of it. People work better in a secure environment, so you change as little as you have to."

Notting Hill has already made progress on management, raising its gas servicing target from 75% of homes to 94% – but Davies admits there is much to be done in this area.

She has made it a priority to deal with the fraught relationship between the RSL's board and management – sources close to the organisation say this has been a stumbling block for previous chief executives. Davies had a very warm relationship with her board at Servite, and she and her Servite chair Marta Philips speak of each other in glowing terms. Davies puts great store in collaborating with her team, and says: "I was very happy in my previous job, I had a very excellent board and a very good senior management team, which is what makes the chief executive's job easy.

"I've found the board charming, capable and extremely committed to Notting Hill – as individuals," she says. "But the way it was set up, it was what I'd call a stakeholder or political board, where you go to represent the interests of the tenant, the leaseholders, the local authorities. I envisage a partnership board where everyone has the best interests of Notting Hill at heart, in a corporate context, and anyone who joins does so to add value and comes with expertise that's of use."

The 12-strong board will be reduced to 10 by September – six of the current members and four newcomers, including Davies herself. The five-year tenure of the chair, Lord Tom Sawyer, is almost up, and Davies says "one or two members wanted to retire and others have been found more appropriate places to be involved with us".

Managing all this change makes for a heavy workload and Davies believes keeping fit is essential to do the job. She gets up at 5am most days to go the gym before work. "It's the only way to keep going – you need a lot of energy in a job like this," she says.

As well as the vigour, Davies has the confidence to do things her own way.

Her attitude to one of housing's most established rituals – the Chartered Institute of Housing conference in Harrogate – sums up her approach. Many of the sector's deals are rumoured to take place at the bar in the Majestic Hotel, but Davies says: "Do they?

I don't know – I don't go, I don't drink. I'm a complete bore. When I was at Harrogate the other week, a few people said, 'See you at the Majestic'. I thought, 'You must be joking, I'm tired, I'm going to bed'.