Your Own Place

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Partner Insights: Rebecca Claydon

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Emily caught up with Rebecca Claydon, Customer Voice Lead at Freebridge Community Housing, to find out more about Rebecca’s background, top tips for championing customer voice and, what we really need to know, what weapon she’d use in a zombie apocalypse!

“Rebecca meets with either me or Beth (facilitator at Your Own Place) on a monthly basis to discuss plans for the regular Service Champions Forum. We meet on Teams this month, creative juices flowing to design the last Forum of the year. Luckily, Rebecca agrees to an interview and isn’t phased by our entryboard questions as she sees them regularly!


What’s your favourite pizza topping?
I always judge a pizzeria by its margarita pizza – if they cannot get that right, it’s game over!

If you were a plant, what plant would you be?
Yellow winter Jasmine as it smells great and brightens up any grey day!

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
A remote island in the Bay of Bengal

Rebecca’s quick-fire need-to-knows:
Coffee/tea order: Iced espresso
Favourite biscuit: Dark chocolate digestive

Next, I wanted to find out a bit more about Rebecca’s background and what drew her to Customer Voice.

Tell us a bit about you and your journey to your current role.

I began my career in a London hotel marketing agency, travelling the country to help hoteliers create tailored rewards packages that boosted business during quiet periods. Loving the challenge of new industries, I took this experience into social housing, where, alongside a fantastic team and an inspiring CEO, we launched the first tenant reward scheme in the South of England.
From there, I explored fundraising, and then led a community festival in Kensington & Chelsea, balancing the needs of residents, sponsors, and trustees to deliver an event everyone loved. Next, I joined The View from The Shard team, working with another inspiring leadership group to create an unforgettable visitor experience. After a brief role in customer service at ExCeL London and managing a flagship Barnardo’s charity shop, the pandemic made me rethink.
I decided to return to Norfolk and to housing — the industry where I felt I made the biggest impact. I spotted an opportunity at Freebridge, applied, and here I am!

What interested you about Customer Voice?

I’ve always been passionate about listening to people’s experiences and finding ways to use their insights to shape better services. My career has taken me across diverse industries — from hotel marketing to social housing, community festivals, and customer service in renowned venues. In each role, I found that understanding people’s needs, concerns, and aspirations was the key to delivering real value. This passion naturally led me to Customer Voice, where the focus is on ensuring customers feel heard, valued, and empowered.

What particularly interests me about Customer Voice is the opportunity to connect the dots between customers’ experiences and organisational improvements. Whether it’s through initiatives like myFreebridge or collaborating with Service Champions, Customer Ambassadors or the Community Voices, I love facilitating conversations that uncover what really matters to people. Using these insights to drive positive change — improving services, enhancing team morale, and boosting customer satisfaction — is incredibly rewarding.

It’s crucial to ensure customers’ voices aren’t just heard, but genuinely influence decision-making and lead to meaningful, measurable improvements. Ultimately, championing Customer Voice is about building trust, transparency, and stronger relationships, which benefits both customers and the organisation.

Wow, it’s amazing to hear about your experience across different sectors and it’s so clear you have passion supporting people to share their voices and be heard, ensuring this is backed up with action. On this note – what are your aims for tenant engagement?

My aim for tenant engagement is to ensure that Customer Voice is fully integrated into Freebridge’s strategic decision-making, going beyond simply listening to customers to actively using their feedback to shape services and improve their homes. Having worked on impactful community projects like organising the vigil at Grenfell Tower, I understand how vital it is to make sure people feel heard and valued. This experience reinforced my belief that genuine engagement is about building trust and demonstrating that customers’ input leads to meaningful action.

At Freebridge, the Customer Influence Plan reflects this philosophy by ensuring engagement is woven into the fabric of all our services. I’m committed to empowering customers to influence decisions that affect their homes and communities, in line with our ambitious ‘Building Better Futures’ objectives. However, engagement isn’t just about collecting feedback—it’s about using that feedback to influence strategic decisions, ensuring that customers see their views reflected in tangible outcomes. This closing the loop shows customers that they are not only heard but respected and valued.

On a personal note, my aim is to make tenant engagement feel innovative, fun, and accessible. Engagement should come from a place of trust and transparency, where promises are never made lightly, and integrity is key. By fostering this approach, we can create a culture where customer engagement becomes an ongoing, positive force that enhances both the services we offer and the lives of our tenants. When customers are engaged and happy, Freebridge will naturally be a great place to work too.

Your Own Place’s values really connect with your approach to engagement – making it innovative and accessible, transparent and restorative. How does Your Own Place support you to work towards your aims with engagement?

Your Own Place plays a crucial role in helping Freebridge achieve its Customer Influence goals, particularly through its support in hosting focus groups and facilitating monthly meetings with Service Champions. Their expertise in independent facilitation ensures that the feedback gathered is unbiased, creating an environment where the operational side of Freebridge’s services can be thoroughly scrutinised. These meetings are a key part of our engagement strategy, where Service Champions can openly discuss issues and suggest improvements based on customer experiences. This is critical for ensuring that customer voices influence the decisions that shape the services we provide.

By working with Your Own Place, we also benefit from their proven skills in delivering actionable insights. Their structured approach to workshops and facilitation helps Freebridge not only hear customer feedback but also use it effectively to make meaningful changes. This aligns perfectly with our aim to close the loop and communicate back to customers that their views have been taken seriously, directly impacting improvements in their homes and local communities.

Their support enhances our ability to build trust and transparency, ensuring that customer
engagement at Freebridge isn’t just a process, but a partnership where customers can see the real impact of their involvement. This approach, underpinned by Your Own Place’s facilitation, helps us meet the vision of ensuring every customer feels valued, respected, and involved in shaping the services they receive.

Your Own Place is blushing – but we have to ask, why would you recommend Your Own Place?

I would recommend Your Own Place because they offer unbiased, expert facilitation in housing and tenancy-related matters. Their independent approach ensures that customer feedback is gathered in a transparent and unfiltered way, which is essential for initiatives like myFreebridge and the Service Champions programme.

By involving independent facilitators, you create a safe, neutral environment where customers feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions. This results in more authentic insights and helps identify real issues and opportunities for improvement. Your Own Place excels at listening to a wide range of voices, capturing different perspectives, and feeding these back in a way that drives meaningful change.

Their focus on skills development, empowerment, and preventing housing challenges aligns well with Freebridge’s goals of improving services and strengthening community relationships. Working with an organisation like Your Own Place demonstrates a clear commitment to transparency, trust, and genuine customer engagement.

Thank you for sharing your background, aims and experience of working with us. Your passion and expertise is so evident in your answers – What would your top tip be for championing customer/tenant voice?
My top tip for championing customer or tenant voice is to be creative, inclusive, and balanced:
– Think outside the box with your approach to engage people in meaningful ways.
– Listen widely to capture diverse perspectives and build a 360-degree understanding.
– Stay impartial and identify common themes (that golden thread!) to shape solutions that truly reflect the voices you’ve heard.
This way, you ensure every voice has the power to influence positive change!

You didn’t think we’d forgotten to address the zombie apocalypse, did you? Rebecca, we simply must know: What three items would you want in your backpack in a zombie apocalypse?
Sixpence (my cat), my slingshot and my favourite chocolate truffles
Priorities – chocolate is essential!

It was great to catch up with Rebecca and hear about her experience. If you’d like to connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn.“

Rebecca (top left) and five Service Champions at Freebridge’s last Service Champions’ Forum of the year.

If you’d like to find out more about our Tenant Engagement offer, click here or get in touch with Zoe at zoe@yourownplace.org.uk

Introducing Zoe, new CEO of Your Own Place

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We’re so excited to give an official Your Own Place welcome to Zoe Webb – our new CEO! 

Emily, a facilitator at Your Own Place, met with Zoe at one of the team’s favourite haunts, The Cherry Leaf Cafe, to grill her with some interview questions. Zoe answered some classic Your Own Place workshop questions and shared a bit more about her background and what attracted her to Your Own Place.

“I met with Zoe at the Cherry Leaf – diet coke for me, hot chocolate for Zoe – and her enthusiastic energy was immediately clear. She also insisted on hearing my answers to the questions too so that we could both get to know each other! 

We kicked off with some of our go-to entryboard questions – we use these at the start of workshops as an icebreaker and something to chat about while waiting for everyone to arrive.

What is your favourite pizza topping?

At the moment, pepperoni is my go to. My favourite changes – sometimes it’s prawns, or mushrooms. The best pizza I’ve ever had was Hoisin duck!

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I have lots of countries on my travelling list. At the top is Japan – there are so many reasons Japan interests me – the culture, the people, the traditions, the Cherry Blossoms! And, of course, the food. I have to read everything before I go and plan it so I don’t miss anything.

If you were a plant, what would you be?

I thought about this for a long time. I’d be a sedum. [picture me looking on, not knowing what a sedum is] It’s a succulent – a ground coverer. They spread quickly and they flower – I relate to sedum as a hardy perennial and an all rounder!

I went on to ask Zoe some quickfire need-to-knows:

  • Coffee order: Americano
  • Breakfast item of choice: Normal day – fruit and yoghurt, treat – pecan plait or sourdough avocado
  • Fave biscuit: Dark chocolate ginger (borders)
  • Fun fact: When I was 13, my friend taught me a secret language that I can still speak!

And next, I learned about Zoe’s background – and the incredible breadth of her experience!

Tell us a bit about your background

I’ve been working in the housing and homeless prevention field for thirty years. During that time I’ve worked across local authorities, the voluntary sector, housing associations and my most recent role was working in a specialist supported housing provider. I’ve worked in a variety of roles – I’ve been an advisor, a community-based support worker, I’ve established a rough sleeper team for a local authority. I’ve also worked on really exciting projects for the Ministry of Justice – I feel really privileged to have been involved in some really innovative projects. Most recently, I’ve worked with a specialist supported housing provider, focused on supporting single people experiencing homelessness or insecure housing. I’ve purposefully worked across the sector, to build a holistic view and understanding of housing. 

That’s incredibly impressive. What attracted you to Your Own Place?

Your Own Place’s values, the asset-based approach, working alongside people while they’re going through difficult transitions – these are all things that really attracted me to Your Own Place. I met Rebecca ten years ago, and I was really impressed by her approach, I really got it. I could see similarities with the work I’d been doing previously as a support worker in Greater Manchester. I was working on a young parents project, mainly with young women living in private rented accommodation that was insecure, unsafe and unaffordable. My focus was working with them – with them being very important – to support and equip them with the skills to be able to negotiate and improve their situation. I see that approach at Your Own Place. I see the strengths-based, asset-based approach and I’m really inspired by that.

Tell us about your passions. Why homelessness prevention?

Everyone has the right to a safe and affordable home. I’m a massive believer in homelessness prevention and a massive believer in early intervention. Insecure housing and homelessness creates trauma – trauma that prevention can avoid. If we invest in prevention, it pays dividends. I’m also passionate about people, creating space for change, creating space for discovering unknown capacity and skills within them and in their community. People have the capacity to find their own solutions, but they may not yet know they have this capacity – or they know they have but they are fighting against a system that’s not always working for them.

Thank you for sharing so much about your experience, values and passions. So…What has stood out to you about Your Own Place as a workplace so far?

The team have been incredibly welcoming. I’ve noticed how abundantly collaborative the team is – communication is excellent, they use Trello and instant messaging really effectively, and it’s so clear that everyone is really connected. This is hard to achieve in remote work [Your Own Place has hybrid and flexible working], but Your Own Place has a great handle on it! I’ve also seen the care and attention that goes into the quality of delivery. It’s very clear that I’m working with a skilled and passionate team.

What are you excited about at Your Own Place?

I’m excited to meet our existing partners and new partners. I’m excited about expanding our reach to prevent homelessness and embedding a collaborative approach to preventing homelessness. I’m also really excited for more and more people to see that what we do at Your Own Place works!

What would you like to say to potential business partners thinking about working with Your Own Place?

First and foremost: You won’t regret it! We’ve got a tried, trusted and successful model; our impact is demonstrated. Come and see us, come and talk to us! Prevention is a wide remit, and I think we can apply our approach across systems – so let’s explore it and contribute towards ending homelessness.

And finally, we simply must know: What three items would you want in your backpack in a zombie apocalypse?

Water, food, weapon [I pressed here for what exact weapon…] …a chainsaw!

An excellently gory and effective weapon chosen to take on zombies!

I had a wonderful time meeting with Zoe and grilling her. I can really see how her vast experience, her enthusiasm and innovative thinking, her passion are all going to be incredible assets to the leadership of Your Own Place.“

Connect with Zoe on LinkedIn

So that’s a wrap

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Waking up at 5am, my immovable exercise hour at 6am, probably a quality coffee in the sunshine (the past is always sunny) and then the usual day of team support, planning a workshop of some kind, signing off a report, doing some finance, troubleshooting and meeting a potential customer, likely after the fifth chasing email.

This day-in-my life feels like the optimal day during my time at Your Own Place.  This was likely somewhere around 2018 .  The recently enlarged team felt settled, I had moved into Norwich, making my work-life balance a lot simpler, there was an excellent coffee shop on the corner near the office and we had the novelty of a base.  It was pre-Covid and post the three-year-hump when lots of Community Interest Companies fail.  The team had grown, but not so much that I was constantly worried about money – every year had seen a surplus.  Something else that changed during and since Covid.

At some point in the second half of my decade, something shifted.  With Covid, the cost of living crisis and the catching up of the austerity years, the financial outlook felt bleak.  Whilst our own fortunes had not radically altered, the backdrop undeniably had.

This final post isn’t about doom and gloom.  Quite the opposite.  It’s about the journey you go on over ten years in social business.  Because at some point something changed for me too. Not for good or for ill, but just different.  Something I see when I look back at my social media output, my email approaches and how I conducted myself. 

Having created Your Own Place from a deep sense of injustice that some people, through no fault of their own are more likely to become homeless than others, the focus of my time, the podcasts I listened to, the articles I read and my broader interests, shifted not away from social justice, rather towards leadership as well.

Effectively a self-employed one-woman band for the first 18 months of Your Own Place’s life, as the organisation grew in size, ambition, quality as well as complexity, I needed to up my leadership game.  This hadn’t been in the plan. With a long way still to go and to learn, I’d like to think I’ve done okay.  I’ve made a gazillion mistakes, but in the impact language I love so much, there’s no counterfactual.  We don’t know what would have happened if I’d done something different/nothing.

That Your Own Place has proved me to be competent and more than competent not just in delivering workshops (it was this skill that led to our model), but in creating profit and loss accounts, public speaking, pitching, managing impact, making decisions, being resilient and tenacious, leading a strategy and a team and influencing and inspiring others is a chance revelation.  And this is exactly why we exist in the first place.  That it’s chance and good luck that I got those opportunities.  And it’s chance and bad luck that others don’t. 

So as I enter my last two weeks, the team is strong, we’re recruiting in Colchester and this year looks very likely to be our best yet financially, I find myself brimming with gratitude.  Brimming with gratitude for the person that Your Own Place has enabled me to become and with hope that others get their opportunities too. I am grateful for every single interaction, connection, opportunity and kindness shown to me .  Please continue to show it to Zoe, our new CEO, our team and everyone you work with or support. You never know what someone can become.

See you on the other side.

A new Non-Executive Director

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We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Adam Clark as our newest Non-Executive Director.

Adam is an experienced senior leader in the social housing sector. Having previously held Director and Executive roles at Broadland Housing Association and North Star Housing Adam currently works as a consultant supporting delivery of strategic reviews, improvement and customer experience.

Adam is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and a founding member of CIH Futures, a board for young professionals. As a frontline member of staff, Adam was involved in supporting the delivery of Your Own Place early projects and remains focused on that founding purpose.

Throughout his work, Adam has witnessed first hand the impact a good home and quality support can make. “For so many people, a good home is a foundation for a good life”. Outside of work Adam is passionate about the outdoors and runs a freelance photography business.

Announcing our new CEO

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Your Own Place is thrilled to announce, after a rigorous recruitment process, that Zoe Webb has been appointed as the new CEO from 1st September. We know you will welcome her and be as excited as we are to get to know her.

From Warren, our interim Chair:

On behalf of the Your Own Place Board and the Your Own Place team, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Zoe Webb, our new Chief Executive Officer.

With a wealth of experience in the Social Housing sector, I am confident that Zoe will continue the exceptional and necessary work completed by the Your Own Place team over the past decade.  To fulfil our mission – to prevent homelessness, and our vision – that everyone has a safe and secure home.

Zoe commences with Your Own Place on the 1st September 2024 and I know my Board colleagues will join me in wishing every success for Zoe and the team over the next decade.

And from Zoe herself:

“I am thrilled to be joining Your Own Place as their new CEO. Rebecca and the team have built a dynamic and impactful social enterprise and I am truly excited about continuing to build purposeful and trusting relationships to address the adversity people face and create change.”