Our Programme Manager, Jennifer Adler-Potts, reports back from the UK’s biggest built environment gathering
Last week, I attended UKREiiF in Leeds, one of the UK’s largest gatherings of developers, local authorities, planners, architects, housing providers, investors and policymakers.
Part conference, part networking forum and part political temperature check, UKREiiF has rapidly become a major meeting point for the people shaping Britain’s towns and cities. Over several days, conversations ranged from transport infrastructure and planning reform to retrofit, regeneration and housing delivery.
This year, one issue sat above almost everything else: how to build the homes the country needs when the economics of development are becoming increasingly difficult.
In particular, the fringe events at UKREiiF were more challenging than those in the main event and two of these brought together speakers from local government, national agencies and the development sector repeatedly returned to the same tension. There remains strong political and professional support for building new homes, particularly in London and the South East, but viability is making delivery harder and harder.
For London, where housing affordability remains one of the defining civic questions of the age, those conversations matter.
One panel, titled Building Homes in the Age of Five Party Politics, convened by Field Consulting brought together representatives from across the political spectrum to discuss housing delivery in an increasingly fragmented local government landscape.
The political differences were real and often sharply expressed. Yet beneath them sat an unusually broad consensus that the housing system is failing too many people.
Speakers described younger residents unable to buy or rent affordably, families trapped in temporary accommodation, and growing frustration from working people who increasingly feel locked out of stable housing.
The newly elected Green Mayor of Lewisham, Liam Shrivastava, whose party secured a major victory in the borough elections earlier this month, repeatedly stressed the need for cooperation across political lines if housing targets are to be met.
Speaking about Lewisham’s housing pressures, he pointed to more than 11,000 people on the housing waiting list and over 2,300 households in temporary accommodation. He argued that councils, developers and government would increasingly need to work together pragmatically despite political differences.
Deputy Leader of Wandsworth Council and Conservative councillor Peter Graham argued that London cannot address affordability pressures without significantly increasing housing delivery, while also warning that excessive bureaucracy and slow decision-making are constraining growth.
Meanwhile, Labour Islington Council leader Una O’Halloran repeatedly returned to the idea that housing should not simply be about units or towers, but about inclusion, belonging and community life. Speaking about younger Londoners in particular, she argued that many want not just somewhere to live, but somewhere they feel part of.
That emphasis on housing as social infrastructure, not simply physical infrastructure, surfaced repeatedly throughout the week.
If there was one phrase heard more than any other across the conference, it was “viability”.
Developers, local authorities and housing agencies all described the growing difficulty of making schemes financially stack up. Construction costs remain high. Borrowing is expensive. Infrastructure requirements are increasing. Meanwhile expectations around affordable housing and sustainability continue to grow.
At one point, a developer in the audience summed up the frustration bluntly: “25%, 30%, 50% of zero is still zero.”
That tension came through repeatedly in debates around affordable housing targets. Political leaders spoke passionately about the need for genuinely affordable and social rent homes, while developers warned that unless schemes remain financially deliverable, nothing gets built at all.
The discussion rarely descended into simplistic pro-development versus anti-development positions. Instead, speakers wrestled openly with difficult trade-offs.
How much affordable housing can schemes realistically sustain? What role should public subsidy play? How should councils balance social value against financial viability? And what happens when planning permission exists, but projects still cannot proceed because the numbers no longer work?
One speaker pointed out that many boroughs already have thousands of homes with planning permission that remain unbuilt because developers cannot currently make them viable.
That reality feels especially important for London, where much future housing delivery depends on large, infrastructure-heavy regeneration schemes that are particularly vulnerable to changing market conditions.
A second discussion titled Why Aren’t We Delivering More Successful Places, convened by Urban Design Group focused on successful place-making and regeneration, widened the conversation beyond housing numbers alone.
Speakers from Homes England, local government and major regeneration projects repeatedly stressed that successful housing depends on transport, public space, local centres, community infrastructure and long-term stewardship.
There was also notable honesty about the industry’s own mistakes.
Several speakers argued that too much recent development has focused on compliance and speed rather than genuinely successful places. Others stressed the importance of returning to completed schemes to understand what actually works in practice and what does not.
Joanna Averley, Chief Planner at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, spoke about the importance of “lasting legacy” and argued that the sector increasingly understands that good design is not simply a matter of taste but something that can materially improve how places function.
Amy Burbidge from Homes England discussed the challenge of suburban expansion and the need to create genuinely walkable, connected communities rather than isolated housing estates dependent on cars.
Meanwhile, Related Argent who have led London regeneration projects such as King’s Cross and Brent Cross Town spoke about the importance of patient investment, long-term stewardship and giving places time to evolve organically.
One particularly striking theme was the growing recognition that successful places cannot simply be imposed from above. They require collaboration, long-term commitment and, increasingly, trust between the public and private sectors.
Taken together, the conversations at UKREiiF suggested that London’s housing debate is entering a more complicated but perhaps more honest phase.
For years, discussion often focused on whether enough homes were being approved through the planning system. Increasingly, the harder question is whether homes can still be delivered at the scale, quality and affordability the city needs. That changes the conversation.
It means transport infrastructure matters as much as housing targets. It means viability can no longer be treated as a technical footnote. It means local authority capacity matters. And it means regeneration must increasingly be understood as long-term civic stewardship rather than simply construction.
It also suggests London may need a more mature public debate about trade-offs.
How should affordability be balanced against viability? What level of public subsidy is realistic? How dense should new development become? How do we retrofit existing homes while building new ones? And how do we ensure growth creates communities rather than simply developments?
These are not questions with easy answers. But the discussions at UKREiiF suggested the sector is at least beginning to engage with them more openly.
For The London Society, these debates reinforce why civic conversation around housing matters so much.
Over the past year, our own housing-focused talks and panels, including discussions examining approaches in Enfield and the City of London, have sought to bring these issues into public conversation beyond the professional sector.
Equally, our tours of major regeneration projects such as Brent Cross Town help connect everyday Londoners with the realities, opportunities and tensions involved in shaping the future city.
Because housing policy cannot be left solely to politicians, developers or planners.
London works best when more people understand how decisions are made, what trade-offs exist, and how the places around them are changing.
UKREiiF showed an industry grappling seriously with those questions.
The debates at UKREiiF reinforced the value of civic societies as spaces where professionals, policymakers and engaged Londoners can come together to better understand the trade-offs, tensions and opportunities shaping the future of the capital. The challenge now is not simply whether London can build more homes, but whether it can build the civic trust, long-term thinking and shared ambition needed to create successful places for future generations.
