Census reveals equality targets are pipe dream ...

The drive to boost the number of women running housing associations is in danger of missing its target, Housing Today’s leadership census shows.

The Leadership 2010 project – run by the National Housing Federation and the Housing Corporation – aimed to have women heading half the 200 largest associations by stock by the end of the decade.

But our survey of the 100 largest associations by stock found only 13 have a female chief executive two years after the equality drive was launched.

When the project began, just 13% of the top 200 associations were run by a woman.

But a lack of funding has been blamed for stalling progress.

Jane Greenoak, the National Housing Federation’s Leadership 2010 champion, said it had been expected the scheme would get up to £100,000 from the Housing Corporation in innovation and good practice grants.

She added that it was never absolutely certain the project would get the funds.

Greenoak said: “Jon Rouse has gone on record saying there will be funding in 2005 towards this programme but we don’t know how much yet. Nothing has really happened in terms of innovations to make things work yet.”

The Housing Corporation was unable to comment on changes to the innovation and good practice budget, which was cut last year.

But the NHF said it was bidding for money from the fund to cover a leadership training programme with Lancaster University and networking groups.

A spokesperson for the NHF said: “We acknowledge that it is an ambitious target – that is why it is all the more important that the sector and the corporation work together towards achieving it.”

Kate Davies, chief executive of Notting Hill Housing Group, and one of the select band of women to head a top 100 association, said mentoring could help senior women realise they have the potential to be chief executives.

The situation is just as bad in councils, with women running the housing departments of just 12 of the 100 local authorities with the most housing stock.

The figures for the numbers of housing associations and local authority housing departments run by ethnic-minority people are also shocking.

Only one director of housing out of the 100 largest councils by stock is not white – David Lewis at London’s Lewisham council.

And just eight of the top 100 housing associations are headed by a minority-ethnic person – with four of these associations headed by the same person, Anu Vedi, chief executive of Genesis Housing Group.