“From steel apprentice to Arches CEO”
Brian Summerson is a familiar face to those around Sheffield having worked at Arches for over 21 years, with nearly half of those years serving as the Housing Organisation’s CEO.
After leaving school at 15, Brian went straight to work at the City’s steel company Aurora as an apprentice. He found himself naturally drawn to accountancy and before long Brian was looking after the companies accounts and those of their subsidiary businesses as well.
After a period of time working at Aurora, Brian in partnership with other colleagues bought a toolmaking business in Dronfield. Before long Brian’s accountancy prowess was sought when he was asked to look after the books for the then named “North Sheffield Housing”, soon to become Arches Housing.
It wasn’t long before Brian was asked to lead the organisation, and this saw the development of Arches Housing as we know it today.
Brian comments:
“One of my first jobs as CEO was to make sure everyone was being paid fairly in accordance with their role. Up until this point everyone was being paid exactly the same £21,678 from architects to reception staff – the regulator didn’t like this approach, so we set about introducing a co-operative model with salaries to match.”
“We also needed to set our sights on increasing housing supply across Sheffield, so we looked at ways to build new homes to meet this demand, rather than just renovating existing properties that didn’t fit the need of the local community.”
Arches went on to build its largest new build scheme of the time – Wincobank – which saw 39 new homes built in Sheffield, helping to combat the demand for new homes at the time.
Brian adds:
“I’m really proud of my time at Arches and the fact that it is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year is testament to the teams who had the initial vision for Sheffield and its surrounding areas. Paul and the team currently at Arches are impressively pushing this vision forward and expanding on these projects.”
11/07/2025 12:00
