The UK’s housing crisis is one of the most acute challenges facing the country, with millions of young people increasingly locked into private renting, councils under mounting pressure from homelessness, and new housing delivery falling well short of demand.
Against that backdrop, Leeds-based marketing and strategy agency Cast Can is convening a three-day Housing Development Summit at this year’s UKREiiF, bringing together councils, housing associations, investors and developers in an attempt to cut through the stalemate and drive action on one of the country’s most entrenched problems.
Cast Can, part of the Cast Group, is organising the summit through its sector networks, The Housing & Development Network (H&DN) and the National Sales Group (NSG). Organisers say the initiative is a response to escalating pressure across the housing system and a recognition that without coordinated intervention, the crisis risks becoming structurally worse over the next generation.
Andy Watts, group CEO and a 30-year housing industry veteran, said the current situation reflects decades of underinvestment and a failure to act early enough on affordability.
“We’ve got a huge housing crisis – to say that is an underestimation,” he said. “As a country, we’ve just not invested in housing for 40 years, and something has got to change.”
Watts pointed to the growing strain on local authorities, highlighting the rising use of temporary accommodation and the number of children without stable homes.
“We’ve got 170,000 kids living in temporary accommodation,” he said. “Something has got to be done.”
Young renters trapped – and routes out misunderstood
A central issue identified by Cast Can and its networks is the growing number of young people locked into private renting, unable to save for deposits as rents rise and supply tightens, a pressure increasingly visible well beyond London and the South East.
James Hamer, managing director of Cast Can, said the situation is being compounded by poor understanding of existing routes into home ownership, particularly shared ownership – an area Cast has worked in for more than three decades.
Hamer argued that shared ownership remains one of the few scalable mechanisms available to help people transition out of private rent, but only if it is properly understood and communicated.
“People don’t engage if they don’t understand what’s on offer,” he said.
Why UKREiiF is a catalyst for change
The Housing Development Summit will run across three days within UKREiiF, now the UK’s largest real estate and investment conference, which attracted around 17,000 attendees last year.
For Cast Can, UKREiiF has become one of the few environments where government bodies, councils, institutional investors and developers can be brought into the same space — at a moment when housing delivery itself is fragmenting across sectors.
“If we don’t unlock funding, whether that’s private or through government, the top developers don’t move,” Hamer said. “If they don’t move, nothing happens.”
Watts added: “If we don’t create those conversations now, we’re sitting here in 40 years with an even bigger crisis.”
The summit, delivered by H&DN and NSG and supported by the UKREiiF programme and marketing teams, is framed around accelerating collaboration between organisations that control land, capital and planning, with the stated ambition of helping unlock delivery of 1.5 million affordable homes.
Less talk, more outcomes
Organisers say the summit is designed to prioritise outputs over rhetoric, with each session structured to produce practical toolkits, shared frameworks and live partnership commitments rather than high-level discussion alone.
Expected attendees include managing directors and executive teams from housing associations and council-owned developers, alongside politicians, mayors, council leaders, private developers, property specialists, lawyers and funders.
Watts said the value lies as much in informal conversations as in the formal programme.
“One conversation can turn into a joint venture,” he said. “That joint venture can deliver 200 homes and suddenly 50 of those are shared ownership homes for young people. That’s how change actually happens.”
A changing delivery landscape — and a communication gap
The summit comes as the structure of housing delivery itself is shifting. Watts said housing associations are under severe financial pressure following post-Grenfell building safety requirements, limiting their ability to build new homes.
“A lot of housing associations are under massive financial pressure,” he said. “They’re having to look after existing stock first.”
As a result, councils have begun building again, while institutional investors and for-profit providers are moving into areas traditionally dominated by housing associations.
“We’re seeing councils, big commercial investors and banks all coming into the same space,” Watts said. “That changes who needs to be in the room.”
Lee Grasby, group creative director at Cast, said the delivery challenge is being compounded by a failure to clearly explain the routes that do exist for people trying to escape private renting — particularly as anxiety around housing decisions grows.
“A lot of people still see shared ownership as a buzzword or think it means sharing a home with someone else,” he said. “That misunderstanding stops people before they even start looking. Education isn’t a ‘nice to have’ — it’s fundamental.”
Alongside funding and planning reform, the summit will also explore how innovation, including AI, can help improve customer education, reduce administrative friction and streamline the path from aspiration to ownership.
Prolific North × Cast Can: regeneration, placemaking and delivery
As part of the summit, Prolific North will host a flagship roundtable with Cast Can, bringing together Sales and Marketing Directors, Heads of Sales & Marketing and senior decision-makers from housing associations, developers, agencies and sector partners.
Chaired and curated by Prolific North, the roundtable will focus on regeneration of cities and towns, change and placemaking — encompassing architecture, planning, development, investment and long-term impact. The aim is to make the discussion strategic, outcomes-driven and policy-relevant, rather than purely conceptual.
The roundtable forms part of a wider Prolific North × Cast Can editorial focus around UKREiiF, combining interviews, insight pieces and sector commentary designed to turn discussion into shared learning and practical outcomes.
A Northern agency shaping a national debate
Cast Can, headquartered in Leeds, traces its roots back more than 30 years in housing and property marketing. That long-term involvement, Watts said, has pulled the agency into a more central role as the crisis has intensified.
“We’re not doing this as a branding exercise,” he said. “We’re doing it because if the system doesn’t change, the consequences are obvious.”
With affordability worsening and reliance on temporary accommodation rising, organisers say the cost of inaction is clear.
“If we don’t unlock opportunity now,” Hamer said, “we’re not just failing this generation — we’re storing up something far worse for the next one.”
For more information about the Housing Development Summit at UKREiiF, visit thehousingsummit.co.uk.
