Head of Marketing & Communications in Manchester

Platform: HSPG

Status: Full time, permanent.

Salary: £x

Bonus: TBD

Working arrangement: We typically work 4 days in the office, 1 day from home.

Hours: 37.5 hours per week.

Start: ASAP

Reports to: MD (Group)

THE BENEFITS:

• 25 holiday days per year
• 4 ‘Me Days’ per year (take a Me Day – focus on you)
• Team social events and trips
• Wellness allowance of £70 per month to be used for gym, classes, physio or other wellness costs
• Private healthcare with Vitality
• Mintago financial platform
• Drive Electric salary sacrifice
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and parental leave
• Employee referral scheme: £2,000 towards a getaway of your choice

HSPG: A social impact real estate company. Our mission is simple: Building partnerships, creating homes, developing communities. There is a critical lack of affordable housing across the UK, affecting the most vulnerable people in our community. We build long-term partnerships with Local Authorities to acquire and manage demand-driven social and affordable housing across various tenures. Across HSPG’s Living Sector platforms, we are actively acquiring 2,500 high-quality homes from national housebuilders and developers by the end of 2025. These properties are managed by our experienced team, grouped into portfolios, and funded by our institutional investment partners. HSPG aims to positively impact our residents’ lives while providing long-term, sustainable returns for our investment partners.

Core Behaviours:

Core mission: Your core mission is to build and protect the reputation, credibility and narrative of HSPG across the housing sector. You will own how the business presents itself externally, ensuring our mission, expertise and partnerships are communicated clearly and consistently. You position HSPG as a credible, thoughtful and trusted voice in affordable housing and social impact real estate, contributing thoughtfully to industry conversations around delivery, partnerships and impact. You translate complex activity across the Group, acquisitions, partnerships, housing delivery and investment, into clear communications that strengthen relationships with investors, developers, Local Authorities and sector stakeholders. You operate as a strategic communications partner to the SLT (Senior Leadership Team) while remaining hands-on in execution. Your focus is positioning, credibility and engagement across the wider sector on behalf of the group. This role is focused on reputation, narrative and sector credibility, rather than consumer marketing or digital acquisition campaigns.

Accountability:

You are accountable for:

• Group marketing and communications strategy
• External messaging and narrative
• PR and media relationships
• Thought leadership and sector positioning
• Marketing materials across the Group
• Marketing budget and allocation

You are not accountable for:

• Shared ownership sales channels
• Property listing portals or lead generation platforms
• Sales conversion or transactional marketing

Obsess: These points get you out of bed in the morning and keep you up at night! If you’re not obsessed with these, the role isn’t for you.

• Narrative clarity: ensuring HSPG’s mission and impact (why), strategy (what), and behaviours (how) are communicated simply and consistently.
• Sector credibility: ensuring HSPG is known and respected by developers, Local Authorities, institutional investors and housing partners.
• Meaningful engagement: connecting with stakeholders in the right forums, to get (and measure) the right results.
• Quality over distractions: focusing on communication that genuinely strengthens the platform’s reputation and commercial performance.

If you measure success purely in clicks or impressions, this role is not for you.

Excel: You are excellent at these areas: an expert.

• Strategic communications: translating complex housing and investment activity into simple, entertaining narratives.
• Content creation and ownership: producing high-quality written and visual materials across multiple channels.
• PR and media: securing and managing press opportunities that enhance credibility (working with our external agency, Faust).
• Hands-on execution: delivering work yourself rather than relying immediately on agencies or large teams (you are the first marketing hire – no team, no agency).

Specific experience:

• 10+ years’ experience in marketing, communications or public affairs.
• Evidenced track record of building a marketing or communications function.
• Excellent writing and communication capability, and strong ability to use AI for efficiencies.
• Experience operating within regulated or policy-influenced sectors such as housing, real estate, infrastructure or the public sector.

90-day wins:

• Early traction and strategic control.
• Full audit of existing marketing assets, communications channels and data.
• Clear marketing and communications roadmap agreed with MD.
• Consistent LinkedIn and comms cadence established across the Group.
• Streamline HSPG front-facing image on LinkedIn, including team profiles.
• Improved quality, clarity and consistency of investor materials and external messaging.
• Initial PR opportunities secured to support current transactions and announcements.

12-month impact outcomes:

• Material impact and results within first 12 months.
• HSPG recognised as a credible and thoughtful voice within the affordable housing and institutional real estate sectors.
• Clear improvement in institutional and developer perception of the platform.
• Regular inbound conversations with developers, Local Authorities and sector partners.
• Consistent pipeline of thought leadership, articles, white papers, commentary and sector participation.
• High-quality marketing infrastructure in place across website, content and communications.
• A clear communications function established that supports growth across PPHA, Seahorse and future platforms.