This week, Steve Benson, last year’s CIH President, closed his Presidential Charity appeal. Steve set an objective to raise £40,000 during his Presidential year for the Crisis ‘Changing Lives’ project. Steve says, "This is a fantastic charity, which provides grants to homeless people, or people in vulnerable housing circumstances, to help get them back in to employment, or often, in to employment for the first time".

Steve beat his target and raised £41,603 and the photograph shows him presenting the cheque to Leslie Morphy, the Chief Executive of Crisis and Caroline Spelman, the shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government at an award event to celebrate the achievements of people who had benefited from ‘Changing Lives’ grants.

Steve and a team of supporters organised a wide range of activities during the year, including three Golf Days and two Charity Balls. He also laid down a challenge to all of the CIH English regions and the three National Business Units in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Steve said, "I’m really grateful to all of my friends and colleagues who helped me during the year and I’d like to say a special thank you to Gavin Brown, Graham Scanlon and everyone involved at CIH North East, as they comfortably won the award for the region that raised the most money for my appeal". He added, "I’d also like to thank everyone at Ocean Media Group and Inside Housing for all of the support that they gave me throughout the year".

Steve concluded by saying, "It was a great honour for me to be President of the Chartered Institute of Housing and a privilege to lead an appeal that is helping homeless people realise their　vocational ambitions and return to work". He added, "Homeless people face a huge range of difficulties, but if they can be helped either back into employment, or sometimes into employment for the first time, they can become independent and self supporting again".

Photograph caption: Steve presenting the cheque to Leslie Morphy, the Chief Executive of Crisis (left) and Caroline Spelman, the shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.