Familiar faces among Countrywide’s restructured management team

Countrywide has revealed its newly-minted ‘back to basics’ leadership team at national and regional level tasked with restoring the company’s fortunes, although at the top the names are largely unchanged.

The team has been created as part of a £4.4 million redundancy and leadership restructure plan implemented last year to build industry expertise back into its sales and lettings operations.

This includes 89 regional directors now settling into their seats and 300 former staff who have now been persuaded back, enticed in part by the return of local control of marketing and people budgets, which had been centralised during the Platt years.

Countrywide has revealed that it has also separated sales and lettings service lines to report into dedicated management to ‘achieve the right level of support and direction for each business area’.

The new senior team is lead by Countrywide’s managing director Paul Creffield, whose direct reports now include:

Jonathan Simpson (MD of UK North)
Simpson survived the Platt years and has been at the company for over 14 years. He looks after 361 branches and his territory managers are Keith Peacock (North Wales and Birmingham), Sharon Donaldson (Scotland and North) and Ian Cuthbert (Midlands and East Anglia).

Toby Phillips (MD of UK South)
Phillips is one of the firm’s most experienced divisional directors. He started his career at Countrywide as a sales negotiator in 1995 but left the company in 1999, re-joining in 2012. He looks after 353 branches and his territory managers are Keith Knight (South East), Andy Barnes (South Central), Simon Old (South Wales and West) and Stuart Lebb (South West).

Lesley Cairns (MD of Hamptons International)
Until September last year Cairns was Hamptons’ head of lettings before being promoted to MD. She joined the company in 2006 initially as a regional director before being promoted to lettings director in 2006. Hamptons has 102 branches and Lesley’s senior team include Mary Beeton (Head of Sales, London), Peter Everett ( Head of Sales, Country) and Cat Westerling (Head of Lettings).

Nick Taylor (MD of Premier & City)
Taylor was previously operations director at John D Wood and has a 29-year career at Countrywide under his belt.

John Hards (National Lettings Director)
Hards is a recent returnee to Countrywide after retiring from the role of national lettings director.

Phil Tennant (Operations Director)
Tennant has held the role since 2013, prior to which he was COO at Hamptons International.