A pioneering, first-of-its-kind summit taking place in Leeds later this month at UKREiiF, with a focus on accelerating delivery of 1.5 million affordable homes, is already shaping up to be one of the most in-demand events at the annual property forum.
Taking place over three days, the Great Housing Development Summit will bring together councils, housing associations, funders, private developers and representatives from Homes England, to drive action on one of the UK’s most entrenched challenges.
The summit is organised by the Housing & Development Network (H&DN), the National Sales Group (NSG) and Leeds-based marketing and strategy agency, Cast Can.
More than 200 industry professionals have already registered to attend the summit’s opening day alone. Proceedings will begin 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 will also feature networking and panel sessions exploring what success could look like by May 2029, alongside discussions on which organisations are best placed to deliver at scale. The session will be 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, will deliver the keynote address.
Additional sessions will look 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. Other highlights will explore 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 will also address unlocking capital from lenders, identifying the most effective delivery vehicles, and will bring together local authorities, institutional investors and developers to explore the realities of build-to-rent (BTR) investment and challenge common misconceptions.
James Hamer, Managing Director at Cast Can, said: “In the UK, millions of people are locked into private renting, 170,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, and housing delivery continues to fall well short of demand. This crisis is one of the most significant challenges facing the country and without coordinated intervention, it will only intensify.
“Cast Can has worked in the shared ownership sector for more than 30 years. It remains one of the few scalable routes to help people transition out of private renting, but only if it is properly understood and communicated well.
“Across three days at UKREiiF, the Great Housing Development Summit will host around 30 roundtables and panel sessions 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.
“Hundreds of property professionals have already registered, from CEOs of national housing associations to regional mayors, government bodies and institutional investors.
“This will be the first time so many focused conversations on affordable housing have taken place in such a short period, accelerating collaboration between organisations that control land, capital and planning. One conversation can lead to a joint venture delivering hundreds of homes, dozens of which could be shared ownership homes. That’s how meaningful change happens.
“Many sessions are already fully subscribed, but a limited number of places remain for those who register in the coming days.”
He added: “This summit is also a valuable opportunity to bring together Cast Can, NSG, H&DN and our wider network for the first event of its kind dedicated solely to affordable housing. It promises to stimulate meaningful discussion and, crucially, drive action to unlock delivery across the UK.”
UKREiiF is the UK’s largest real estate and investment conference, attracting around 17,000 attendees last year. For more information or to secure one of the remaining places, simply search your browser for Great Housing Development Summit.