Reflecting on last week at Ukreiif, The UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum in Leeds which brings together over 16,000 people from the building industry including investors, developers, occupiers, local authorities, contractors and agents.
UKREiiF connects people, places and businesses to drive sustainable, inclusive and transformative investment and regeneration. With the aim to accelerate investment whilst actively promoting Social Value and EDI, helping to disclose and inspire the Future of Real Estate and property, whilst encouraging and energising support to transition to a more sustainable and net zero mindset within the industry.
There were hundreds of events taking place over three days at many venues, which generated a great deal of business for the city; particularly its hotels and bars!
Jimm from People Powered Homes featured on the Community-led housing: A scalable model for impact-focussed regeneration panel with Alex Sparrow from Yorspace, Ann Lundon from The Florrie in Liverpool, Jon Rolls of Resonance and chaired by Sam Stewart of the Nationwide Foundation.It was to an impressive turnout, with so many enthusiastic and passionate individuals filling the audience for the panel and overall it was an inspirational hour with a lot of audience participation with some really interesting practical examples of how Community led housing is being successfully delivered and thoughts around how it can be scaled.
It was inspiring to see how dedicated everyone is to the cause of community-led housing. These conversations are crucial, as they pave the way for innovative solutions and collaborative efforts that can make a real difference in our communities and raise the profile of the CLH movement. The panel provided a fantastic platform to exchange ideas, share experiences, and explore pathways to support and empower groups to create housing initiatives.
Jimm was also involved with a “Leaders of the North” session as part of the Housing Development summit, which also had some excellent debate around scaling up housing delivery more generally across the north of England (“Scaling up” was the buzz phrase of UKREiiF!) and it was good to be involved in such a session involving local and regional authorities, developers, housing associations and consultants, and being able to keep “people and places” firmly on the mainstream housing agenda.
We hope there will be many more opportunities like this in 2027, where we can continue to build on the momentum generated at this event. The potential for positive impact is immense, and it is through events like these that we can drive meaningful change.
Thank you to Resonance for inviting us and other members of the CLH community to have us as part of this important dialogue. Let’s keep the conversation going and hope to have an even bigger presence next year and continue to work together towards a brighter future in community-led housing!
