PlaceShapers New Years Leaders' Event
11 February 2025
These events are a great opportunity to gain insight into how place-shaping looks in different part of the country.
On Tuesday 28 January about 30 chief executives and chairs from around the country came together in London for PlaceShapers’ third Leaders’ Event. The events are a unique space for leaders to come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities as organisations committed to place-shaping.
In a packed and buzzy day, 11 chief executives and chairs led sessions which dug down into some of the big place-shaping themes, and prompted wide ranging and energetic discussions. In the spirit of it being peer-led, I was asked to sum up at the end so drew out some of my key take-aways from the day.
Carol Carter, Chief Executive of Origin, ably opened the meeting with some sanguine remarks about the state of housing - and homelessness - in London. All this despite her phone which held all of her key stats dying on her at the start of her presentation (never work with animals, babies or IT). The chilling impact of the housing crisis came through - the fact that it costs £4m per day in London to deal with homelessness was a statistic that stuck in my mind. She challenged the group to come up with solutions for some of the challenges which might chime with the current government and this fed into our discussions on PlaceShapers submission to the Spending Review.
Pictured: Catherine Ryder, CEO, PlaceShapers
Our very own Catherine Ryder, PlaceShapers Chief Executive, talked about what our response might be to the future Spending Review and talked about the value of place-making. She highlighted the positive initiatives the government has already taken (general support for social housing and housing associations, an ambitious target for new homes, more money for the Affordable Housing Programme, a five year rent settlement, consultation on a 10 year rent settlement, upcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill) but brought us back to earth by reminding us that it's not just about the numbers - what you build and where is more important. And she shared her worry about whether regeneration is getting lost in all of the talk about more homes – and stressed how part of our role as PlaceShapers to make the case for regeneration. Yes, we want more homes, but we also want better homes.
Devolution and the Government’s White Paper was a theme running through the day. This morphed into discussions around partnership working and collaboration too and how best to do it. It was fascinating to hear about this works, or could work, in various areas of the country and how we use the opportunity of devolution to shape a place-based approach to housing. Ideas and insight from the day are already informing work that PlaceShapers is developing on this.
We had some great discussions about the challenges and opportunities of being PlaceShapers in today's world and some of the challenges around collaboration with examples of things that had worked well and not so well and lessons learned.
Simon Wilson, Chief Executive of Pioneer, reminded us of the value diversification and taking on new areas of work as part of our remit to deliver on out place-shaping role. They now manage a football stadium for example, giving them roots and links into the local community as well as a source of income. And from the floor we talked about the value of new partners to work with for the benefit of our residents such as sports clubs, golf clubs and football clubs. We agreed that we need to think about what our residents' most pressing needs are and if we're able, pivot our services to meet those needs.
What was really reassuring about the day was the amount of similar experiences in the room but, at the same time, we all got some tangible examples of initiatives that we could take away and trial in our organisations and regions too.