Nine young professionals became some of the first graduates from a new UK-wide housing maintenance qualification on 1st July.
The students who completed the Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications in housing maintenance have studied at Lewisham College, the first college in England to deliver the programme.
Students on the course came from L&Q, London Borough of Greenwich and Hyde Housing Group.
The qualifications support non-technical professionals to develop their ability to manage complex and increasingly demanding housing maintenance programmes and should tackle the problems of recruiting high quality technical staff.
David Montague, Group Chief Executive at L&Q, praised the new qualification, which was jointly developed by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), as something that was badly needed.
Top architects and specialists, including Sir Richard MacCormac and Professor Anne Power, are amongst those recruited to take on the challenge of making sure homes of the future meet the needs of our ageing population.
The experts will make up a new Innovation Panel which will gather good practice from across Europe and put together new and creative proposals to help put us at the forefront of housing for older people.
Chaired by Lord Best, the Panel will speak to residents and housing experts before embarking on an intense period of research over the summer.
Robert Napier, chairman of the Homes and Communities Agency, said:
"With an increasingly ageing population, this country is facing a challenge in terms of providing suitable, affordable housing that meets the needs of all its residents.
The Panel will identify innovative next steps to create housing for an ageing population, improving the availability and choice of high quality sustainable homes and neighbourhoods and quality of life."
The Innovation Panel has been set-up by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and will meet for the first time in July. It will then report to ministers in the autumn, on what can be done to ensure that future housing will create sustainable and inclusive homes and neighbourhoods, which an ageing population want and can afford to live in.
