David Hennings

David Hennings is the founder of Waving Cat Consultants. He has over 25 years experience as a senior manager in the public sector in local government, social housing and the voluntary sector. David’s career covers 4 major organisations. Catalyst Housing Group, the London Borough of Haringey, the London Borough of Camden and the London Borough of Brent as well working in the voluntary sector delivering employment and training programmes.

David’s skill is seeing how different problems and solutions can be brought together to create new opportunities. He is also focused on pragmatic and achievable solutions rather than complex and unachievable proposals. He has a track record on taking on difficult projects and teams and turning them round into successes.

Career achievements include

• A Delivery of 400 new homes for Catalyst Housing in 3 years
• Winning competitive bids for 3 major estate renewal projects for a 1000 new homes
• Securing £100+ million of external government funding
• Experience of managing major organisational change and managing the political/officer relationship as an Assistant Chief Executive of Haringey Council
• Helping secure the development of Kings Cross and the £3bn government investment needed to deliver the second phase of the channel tunnel rail link while he was Head of Regeneration in Camden
• Developing new partnership approaches to crime prevention in Brent and developing area based regeneration programmes to deal with the underlying causes of crime not just managing the symptoms. Projects included Stonebridge, South Kilburn and Chalkhill estates.
• Rebuilding Camden council relationship with major business and developers which lead to one of the first UK Business Improvement districts for Holborn.

More recently he has set up Waving Cat Consultants to provide project management to the public and private sector. Recent and current projects include

• Managing the development of a major new civic space in Park Royal created through the CPO of a petrol station.
• Advising Grosvenor estates on long term management arrangements for a new town being developed near Oxford.
• Implementing a partnership project to develop digital outdoor advertising on the A40 to bring in significant revenue from low value sites.
• Reviewing temporary accommodation costs to identify a significantly cheaper and better quality approach that builds up an asset base for the local authority.