David Ireland is Chief Executive of World Habitat a UK based international housing charity that helps scale up solutions to the world’s housing problems; from slum upgrading to post-disaster housing and homelessness. It operates the World Habitat Awards, the world’s leading international housing award in partnership with UN-Habitat, and runs programmes aimed at ending street homelessness and scaling up community-led housing. David was previously CEO of Empty Homes Agency where he persuaded successive UK governments to introduce legislation and fund programmes to get empty homes into use. He was awarded OBE in 2013 for services to housing.