A first-of-its-kind summit taking place at UKREiiF this week, with a focus on accelerating delivery of 1.5 million affordable homes, has enjoyed a hugely successful first day with more than 200 industry professionals attending its initial roundtables and panel sessions.
Taking place throughout the three-day property forum, The Great Housing Development Summit is bringing together councils, council-owned housing companies, housing associations, funders, private developers, politicians and representatives from Homes England and government to drive action on one of the UK’s most entrenched challenges.
The summit is being hosted by the Housing & Development Network (H&DN), the National Sales Group (NSG) and Leeds-based marketing and strategy agency, Cast Can.
Proceedings began with a roundtable titled Unlocking Housing Delivery: Industrialised Construction & Programmatic Approaches, examining what works, what fails, and how to procure MMC for quality, warranty and speed.
The day also featured networking and panel sessions exploring what success could look like over the next three years, alongside discussions on which organisations are best placed to deliver at scale. The session was chaired by Andy Watts, Founder and CEO of the Great Housing Development Summit, NSG, H&DN and Cast Can, alongside Toby Fox, Founder and Partnerships Director at H&DN. Ian Workman, Chief National Officer at Homes England also delivered a keynote address.
Additional sessions on the first day looked at building a public mandate for housing, demystifying the Building Safety Regulator and Gateway 2 process, and examining the types of capital available for housing delivery and when each is most effective. Another session explored how the proposed national housing bank could help de-risk projects and attract investment, alongside a session focused on the specific barriers to delivery in London.
Individual roundtables examined how to unlock capital from lenders and scrutinised delivery vehicles. A separate roundtable brought together local authorities, institutional investors and developers to explore the realities of build-to-rent (BTR) investment and challenge common misconceptions.
Andy Watts, Chief Executive at The Cast Group, which has worked in the property sector for 30 years, said: “We’ve been blown away by the success of the first day of The Great Housing Development Summit. The sessions attracted CEOs of national housing associations, regional mayors, developers, government bodies and institutional investors who were all having focused conversations on affordable housing.
“We now have more than 20 roundtables and panel sessions coming up over the next two days that are all focused on unlocking housing delivery. Each session is designed to prioritise practical outcomes, producing toolkits, shared frameworks and live partnership commitments, rather than simply high-level discussion.
“Many sessions are already fully subscribed, but a limited number of places are still available for those who act fast and register now.”
UKREiiF is the UK’s largest real estate and investment conference, attracting around 17,000 attendees last year.