MARK Powell Davies is clear.

After food and water, shelter is man’s most fundamental need.

A home, he believes, is not just protection from the elements – it is the springboard to health, employment, education and social inclusion.

It is part of the social jigsaw of life and when one piece falls out, the whole picture falls apart.

There are few people more qualified to comment. Mark’s working life has revolved around the field of social housing, and for the past 17 years he has been the chief executive of Colne Housing Association.

He plans to stop in the next few weeks. He is not exactly retiring, nor leaving the world of work – those options are still being considered.

But he certainly plans to stop working for at least six months. It is time to take a break.

Mark first became involved in social housing as an undergraduate at Durham University.

He was studying law and did volunteer work with the Cyrenians, a group which helped lonely men.

He said: “They were single men who were often alcoholics or down and outs. Many struggled to find accommodation.

“One of the things which made a big impression on me was how abysmal the accommodation was.

“We were looking to replace it and were trying to raise money through tea dances and coffee mornings.

“Someone from a housing association turned up and said ‘What do you want?’.

“I thought this is fantastic. It was like Father Christmas turning up.

“I had decided law was not for me and this led me to work in housing.

“It suited because it was a practical solution to an issue. Clearly it is not the only solution, but it was one which was tangible.”

Mark became a trainee housing manager with Norwich City Council at the time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when councils were being asked to sell off their housing stocks.

The council railed against the initiative which gave council tenants the right to buy their homes at reduced prices and was one of the last councils in the country to comply.

Mark took a pragmatic, rather than political, standpoint.

He said: “It is all fine to choose to do that but if you are emptying the housing pot through right to buy, you have to fill it up again somehow.”

His next job was with Orbit Housing Association in Burton on Trent before becoming a development site manager covering the Midlands.

The pressure there was to find homes for those in need.

His next job was another challenge altogether. Mark became a development director with Rodney Housing Association in Merseyside.

He worked there during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time of political conflict with socialist firebrand Derek Hatton crossing swords with pillar of the Conservative establishment Michael Heseltine.

“It was a really exciting place to work,” said Mark, “but the scale of the problem there was so great.

“There was lots of poor quality accommodation in Liverpool, which had just been boarded up with tin and left.

“They were two up and two downs and had no internal facilities.

“Whole streets were left and there were huge areas of decaying properties.”

Residents moved out to other areas and the association’s challenge was to rebuild the communities.

Mark’s next post was back in Norfolk with Peddars Way Housing Association, where the task was to carry outamajor modernisation programme on transferred council stock.

The prospect of promotion brought Mark back to Colchester.

The former Colchester Royal Grammar School student, who grew up in the town, said: “It was funny coming back to Colchester.

I had not intended to, but the job attracted me.”

Mark became the chief executive of Colne.

His two driving principles of good quality housing and community involvement came together.

He said: “You can have the loveliest home in the world but it is no good if it is in a dysfunctional community.

“We try to develop communities and that is when a house becomes a home.”

During his tenure, the association’s housing stock has grown from less than 1,000 to more than 3,000 homes across north Essex.

The association also secures homes through private landlords.

“We have championed working with more vulnerable groups, such as providing housing for people with learning difficulties, for the elderly and working with ex-offenders and former substance users.

“The effect on the community if you don’t work with these people is they will end up in hospital or prison and families will be shattered.”

It is not an easy job. The need for more houses inevitably conflicts with residents who don’t want developments on their doorsteps. Cuts to housing benefits fly in the face of a need to pay rent.

Mark sees it as an intellectual challenge to find ways to square the circle – but it does not lead to a perfect world.

From some time after March, Mark, 58, will look to go with his wife, Gillian, a senior faculty employability manager at Essex University, to Australia to spend some time with one of his three brothers, Gawaine.

The work of Colne will go on, however.

It is borrowing £75million to pay for its housing stock, but is looking to borrow a further £20million over the next three months.

The money will be repaid through rents received from tenants.

“The organisation has to be financially sound and astute,”

said Mark.

“The more commercial and financial you are, the more you can do to provide new homes at affordable rents and build communities.”

It seems so simple when you say it like that.