A first-of-its-kind summit that took place at UKREiiF, with a focus on accelerating delivery of 1.5 million affordable homes, was hugely successful with more than 16,000 industry professionals attending its roundtables and panel sessions.

Taking place throughout the three-day property forum, The Great Housing Development Summit brought 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 was 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.

It 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 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 on the first day alone 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 Great Housing Development Summit. The sessions attracted CEOs of national housing associations, regional mayors, developers, government bodies and institutional investors who all had focused conversations on affordable housing.

“We hosted more than 30 roundtables and panel sessions over three days all focused on unlocking housing delivery. Each session was designed to prioritise practical outcomes, producing toolkits, shared frameworks and live partnership commitments, rather than simply high-level discussion.”