Housing & Build to Rent Conference

Lendlease – Stephanie Barbabosa, Head of Build to Rent

Lendlease have recently moved into the European BtR market, with the first homes completed at Elephant Park in London earlier this year. Alongside CPP Investments they have committed an initial £1.5bn to the BtR sector which will see thousands of homes developed across the UK. 900 units in total will be delivered at Elephant Park and Stephanie will give an update on the project, as well as Lendlease’s wider BtR expansion

Watkin Jones – Alex Pease, Chief Investment Officer

Watkin Jones will be delivering over 700 one, two and three bedroom flats and 19,500 sq. ft of leisure and retail space at the former Brains Brewery site in Cardiff. They are also delivering a major PBSA project in Bristol and have ambitions to strike out further into the Western Gateway. Alex joins the even to go into detail about their plans.

Homes England – Fay Mitchelson, Head of Joint Ventures

More information to follow.

All Parliamentary Group for Housing Market and Housing Delivery – Ben Everitt MP, Chair

Ben leads the APPG which has been formed by parliamentarians who share a belief in the importance of building new homes and want to raise housing up the political agenda. The APPG is committed to developing much stronger relations between parliament and business leaders based on a shared agenda of building the quality homes and communities that the UK needs. Ben will give an opening address for the event, providing a call to arms as well as talking about what his cross party group of MPs are doing to accelerate delivery and improve affordability for homeowners.

Canary Wharf Group – Alastair Mullens, Managing Director, Vertus

Canary Wharf Group are the developer of the largest urban regeneration project in Europe with more than 10 million sq ft of development. Their Vertus brand manages over 2,000 BtR apartments on the Canary Wharf estate and is expanding quickly. They have recently announced their latest BtR development, a 55 storey residential tower which will provide 624 homes to be managed under the Vertus brand with enabling work to begin in 2023.

Muse Places – Mike Auger, Board Director

As one of the UK’s leading placemaking focused developers, Muse are delivering a multitude of city centre focused projects. As part of the English Cities Fund they are spearheading the £2.5bn Salford Crescent Masterplan, a 20 year reimagining of St Helens in the North West and in partnership with the Greater London Authority to deliver high street housing in Canning Town. They are also leading the One City Park project in Bradford which will go hand in hand with their forthcoming hosting of City of Culture in 2025. Mike joins the event to talk about all their projects and a wider ambition to support high street and town centre rejuvenation across the UK.

Paradigm Housing – Martyn Jones, Executive Director of Development

Paradigm Housing recently secured £425 million in financing from Lloyds Bank to build a further 2,250 affordable homes across the South East and improve the sustainability of its 15,000-strong portfolio. Lloyds Bank will measure Paradigm’s progress against a set of environmental and social key performance indicators, which align with its new sustainable finance framework. Martyn will provide details of the plans for new homes and discuss their vision to build much-needed affordable housing, while investing in safe and sustainable homes.

Place Capital Group – Faye Whiteoak, Development Director

Place Capital Group was set up earlier this year by the former founder and chair of PlaceFirst, the renowned regeneration specialist. They are planning to work with the UK’s largest Local Authorities and Housing Associations as a Strategic Development Partner to deliver the transformation of ageing housing estates, providing quality affordable homes, and putting place making front and centre of all development plans. They are planning for a swift growth period and will announce their first project in the next couple of months.

Redrow – Kevin Parker, Group Masterplanning Director

Redrow are one of the UK’s leading housebuilders with a number of Garden Village projects in the pipeline, most notably, a recent application has been lodged for 1,400 homes near Tring. Kevin is an urban designer and town planner with over 20 years’ experience in both the private and public sectors. At Redrow, Kevin and his team are responsible for promoting best practice in placemaking across the company as well as providing urban design support to all of the regions. He has led on the launch of an internal placemaking manual called “Designing a Better Way to Live”, which sets out eight measurable principles – the ‘Redrow 8’ – providing a framework for the delivery of great places across the country.

Pocket Living – Thomasin Renshaw, Chief Development Officer

Pocket Living is an innovative property developer, delivering intermediate affordable housing in London. They build homes for the people who contribute economically, socially and culturally to London but who earn too much for social housing and don’t earn enough to buy into the private market. They have an extensive development pipeline, including a 210 home scheme in Leyton, a 149 home scheme in Harrow and further schemes in Barnet and Waltham Forest. A recent funding deal with Barclays and Housing Growth Partnership will allow them to significantly increase their development pipeline and Thomasin will discuss their mission to allow those on lower incomes a way to get their foot on the housing ladder with innovative and sustainable homes and the role of BTR in creating tomorrow’s net zero communities.

Get Living – Rick de Blaby, CEO

As one of the UK’s most eminent voices on the housing sector Rick is focused on growing Get Living’s platform across the UK through creating new build to rent neighbourhoods that are changing the way we live and rent in cities. Rick has 40 years’ experience in development and investment in both the residential and commercial sectors, with a particular interest in regeneration and design. They are pioneering with several major schemes including a £158m 800-bed project in Leeds City centre, the game changing Elephant Central project in Southwark and the JV with Muse which will deliver a £252m Lewisham Gateway scheme.

TPG Real Estate Partners – James Piper, Partner

TPG Real Estate Partners and Gatehouse Bank have launched a new joint venture to deliver high quality, single family homes for rent across the UK. The JV is worth £500 million and will enable the construction of 2,500 purpose built family homes across the North and Midlands. The venture has already secured an initial seed portfolio of four sites comprising 321 homes and is looking for further expansion in the near future. James will discuss how they are looking to partner with major housebuilders and developers, and how their developments will support families in need of quality rental accommodation.

Sovereign Housing Association – Emma Wilson, Head of Development Policy, Strategy and Performance

Sovereign are a leading housing association, providing 60,000 homes across the South of England. They are investing heavily in new homes, investing £280 million and delivering 1,900 new homes annually. Emma has lead on the development of their new Homes and Place Standard which will be the quality benchmark for every property it owns including existing and newly developed homes. It is industry leading in terms of sustainability, resident health and wellbeing and the creation of ‘Place’. Every organisation who wants to work with Sovereign will have to meet this standard and Emma will explain how the widespread adoption of similar standards across the industry would lead to huge benefits.

Stonewater – Jonathan Layzell, Executive Director, Development

33,000 home social housing provider, Stonewater has secured £100 million in new funding from SMBC and Nationwide to support its plan of bringing forward 6,000 new homes over the next four years. Alongside the Guinness Partnership they have also been announced as one of the largest long-term strategic partners with Homes England. They are to receive funding of c £250 million for the two organisations to build 4,180 high-quality, affordable homes by 2029. Jonathan will provide an overview of this important development work and how it contributes to Stonewater’s vision of everyone having a place to call home.

CoCity – Karen Campbell, Managing Director

CoCity are leaders in providing vibrant modern spaces to live and work-building mixed use communities across the UK. With their previous development in Aberdeen, they have proposing to develop vibrant residential spaces Edinburgh. Karen joins us to discuss the UK’s BtR sector as well as CoCity’s unique model – community-centred flexible living, which is a mixed tenure approach to living.

Common – Brian Lee, Managing Director, Real Estate

Common is a leading US residential brand operating in co-living, microunits and traditional BtR with a focus on creating communities and resident wellbeing. With over 7,000 units completed and 17,500 units under development in 26 cities globally, Common are having a major impact on the sector. Over the next 12 months they will be rolling out their first 5 locations in London with a mixture of co-living and traditional BtR. Brian will discuss their efforts to create spaces that are easily shared, facilitate community, and make everyday city living easier.

Local Space – Josie Parsons, Chief Executive

Local Space, is a leading registered provider specialising in high quality settled accommodation that were formed as a partnership with the London Borough of Newham in 2006 and has now branched out to provide 2670 properties across nine local authorities in London and Essex. Inclusivity is at the heart of what they do and as part of the event Josie will talk about blending development with community building.

Bond Bryan – Tomasz Romaniewicz, Associate

With over 12 years’ experience – working in London, Berlin, Yorkshire and Birmingham -Tomasz leads on all things Build to Rent within Bond Bryan in a nationally-focused role. As a specialist in regeneration projects, he has also spent time working in Development Management in London during the infancy days of Build to Rent within the UK market.

Through his experience of working in both client and consultant roles, his position at Bond Bryan has a special focus on bridging the gap between the traditional norms of architect and developer, with a particular skill for identifying land suitable for BTR (both on and off market) and working closely with investors in order to ensure that maximum return for BTR can be attained on sites – and also acting as lead architect on projects.   Tomasz has led Bond Bryan’s growth within BTR throughout the midlands and the north and more recent collaborations have focused on acting, on behalf of private sector institutional funders with Local Authorities, to further expand BTR into tier 2 locations.

Tomasz sits on the RIBA Yorkshire Housing panel – an advocacy voice for housing issues in the Yorkshire region -and the Jewellery Quarter Neighbourhood Forum in Birmingham.  His expertise offers an industry-leading understanding of residential design and placemaking around Build to Rent and Co Living – amalgamating a design-led approach to projects, balanced with an understanding of planning policy, viability and what, ultimately, makes places thrive.

IMMO Capital – Samantha Kempe, Co-Founder, Chief Investment Officer

IMMO capital is Europe’s first technology-led real estate platform – recently announcing a £1 billion investment to buy and retrofit 3000 private rented homes in the UK. With further plans to spend £2.5 billion acquiring and retrofitting over 10,000 homes across the UK, Germany, Spain & the EU. Samantha – co founder of IMMO capital will be joining the session to discuss major Retrofit plans, the challenges and the ways we can support the drive to carbon neutral housing.

Gowling WLG – Nick Mumby, Partner

Nick Mumby advises in relation to all aspects of real estate work, with a particular expertise in complex development projects. He has acted on acquisitions, disposals, developments, planning, leasing, financing and the real estate aspects of corporate transactions.

Nick has worked extensively for corporate vehicles (especially Luxembourg structures) and property funds. He also advises institutional development companies, house-builders, debt-funds and family offices. His experience of acting for both developers and lenders has given him a deep insight into the differing requirements of the various parties and allows him to identify the issues which may arise.

Housing Association Charitable Trust (HACT) – Jacqui Bateson, Managing Director

The Housing Association Charitable Trust is a conglomerate of registered provider experts that come together to ensure social housing is at the forefront of innovation, disruption and future thinking. Ranging from supporting digital integration into development and business strategies to pioneering integrated health partnerships between the housing sector and healthcare providers; Jacqui and her team are also helping housing associations place social value at the forefront of what they do. She joins the conference to talk candidly about how her association will support their sector’s contribution to building back better.