Such exploits might seem somewhat at odds with Singh's background as a housing association boss and Audit Commission mandarin, but in fact his professional life has long been as high-flying as his adrenaline-charged weekends.
He took the helm at Luton almost 18 months ago, poached from the Audit Commission after just a year as its best value northern region director. Singh is now one of only a handful of ethnic-minority council chief executives. He oversees an area where just over a fifth of the population is classed as non-white; Britain's 25th largest town with a housing stock of 9000 properties.
Singh's big passion is fostering good race relations. He is a member of the community cohesion panel, helped panel chair Ted Cantle prepare the community cohesion report in December and spoke on community cohesion at the National Housing Federation's annual conference two months ago.
"Community cohesion is quite a big priority for us in Luton," explains Singh. "We're doing a lot of work locally, including a major consultation exercise, to see what else we need to do to improve the relationship between communities and the services we offer.
"The key point is not to be complacent. Luton does have concentrations of non-white communities in two wards specifically, but there aren't any areas where there isn't a mixed community. We've often analysed our allocation policy to ensure that we aren't inadvertently segregating communities."
Race isn't the only challenge facing Singh at Luton. In December 2000, a major local employer, Vauxhall, decided to cease car production in the town, and it was still reeling from this decision when Singh arrived last year."We were very successful at bringing resources into the town to deal with training and re-skilling," he says – Luton, in partnership with Vauxhall and the East of England Development Agency, secured £8m in regeneration grants. "I met some of the car workers who were being retrained in computers or to be electricians and they seemed to be very much enjoying that opportunity."
And like most densely populated urban areas, Luton faces the perennial problem of a lack of affordable homes. "Our last estimate was that 6000 new homes, most of which are social housing, are needed.
"It's actually very difficult to respond to that requirement. We have increasing levels of homelessness – the percentage of applicants we're accepting as homeless has gone up from 29% last year to 43% this year. Land is very scarce. We've obviously been doing the traditional thing of exploiting brownfield sites, but we're getting to the end of that now." Right to buy is aggravating matters, taking 200 homes out of the loop every year. "As the supply, particularly of family-sized homes, has depleted, we're getting increasing waiting lists and knock-on increases in homelessness applications.
"I personally think [the right to buy] should certainly be amended and in high-demand areas we should look at suspending or radically reforming it."
I’ve done a tandem sky dive from 14,000 ft, I’ve twice bungee-jumped into water and done a charity crane climb with a colleague – which was fun
On the move
Singh became involved in housing almost by mistake, becoming a volunteer and then a caseworker in Tyneside after performing badly in one of his law exams at the University of Northumberland. Former colleagues at housing associations Asra and Hexagon describe him as hard-working and popular, and praise him for "putting us on the map".
One ex-workmate says Singh's "natural inclination was to try to influence government policy and contribute to the bigger picture" and the former campaigner and researcher is certainly ambitious, moving to the Audit Commisson because he wanted to try his hand at something new.
So, why did he leave so soon?
"Deciding to leave the Audit Commission was a difficult decision," Singh says cautiously, as if wary of offending either his new or old employers. "Ideally, I would have liked to have stayed longer. But Luton was the sort of the opportunity that doesn't come up very often."
A former housing association colleague recalls that Singh was "always very smartly dressed and did get rather teased about his silk ties". When we meet, Singh certainly lives up to this reputation, sporting a well-cut designer shirt, flamboyant red cuff links and a matching tie pin. Nor is it just his appearance that's polished; his speech, although still grounded by the accent that reflects his Bradford roots, is peppered with management-speak references to "outward-facing issues" and Luton's "visionary goals".
The financial management, staffing and resourcing skills he honed during his housing career have proved invaluable at Luton, says Singh. Housing now forms just a fraction of his brief as chief executive, but he keeps up with industry developments.
He supports the single inspector regime, saying: "It's right given the growing importance and role of housing associations.
"Obviously the Audit Commission will need to ensure their methodology is adapted to take into account some of the legitimate and specific concerns housing associations may have."
But he is sceptical about the plans to rebrand social housing: "I'm not close enough to the debate to understand why people believe this is necessary and what additional value it will bring."
Darra Singh
Age 43Family Married, one daughter
Education University of Northumberland, Newcastle
Career Housing caseworker, Tyneside Housing Aid Centre 1983; housing adviser, London Housing Aid Centre 1983-85; housing campaign worker, National Homeless Alliance 1985-88; senior policy and research officer, London Housing Unit 1988-90; regional director, North British Housing Association 1990-92; chief executive, Asra Greater London Housing Association 1992-95; chief executive, Hexagon Housing Association 1995-2000; northern regional director, Audit Commission 2000-01; chief executive, Luton council, since 2001
Source
Housing Today
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