Housing, Planning and the Politics of Space

Lili Vetter (She/They) is the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) and customer voice manager at Be One Homes, where they lead work to embed inclusive practice across services and communities. Beyond their role at Be One Homes, Lili serves on the Boards of HouseProud North and the LGBTQ+ Housing Pledge, helping to drive sector-wide improvements in LGBTQ+ inclusion. They also co-facilitate Rainbow Roofs, an LGBTQ+ tenant-led group supporting social housing customers across the UK to influence positive change in housing. Lili plays an active leadership role in the wider sector as Chair of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers EDI Group, championing collaboration, and shared learning across the region. Lili is deeply committed to creating safe, equitable, and inclusive environments, ensuring that all customers feel respected, represented, and able to thrive in their homes and communities.

Zac is a member of the UK Government's Supported Housing Advisory Panel and serves as a Board Member for Gloucestershire Nightstop and YMCA Cardiff.

Zac Bradfield-Box grew up on free school meals in social housing and experienced homelessness as a young adult. Those experiences shaped his determination not just to talk about broken systems, but to change them.
Over the past six years he has worked across politics, communications, and the voluntary sector, combining lived experience with professional and academic insight into housing and social policy.
Zac now contributes to national conversations about housing and support services, bringing together policy thinking with the realities of the communities those systems are meant to serve.
He is particularly focused on how systems can be redesigned to give people from disadvantaged backgrounds a genuine chance to succeed.

Dr Steve Iafrati is an Assistant Professor of Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. His book, ‘Housing Inequality in the 21^st Century’, published by Policy Press in April 2026, examines the way in which housing inequalities are an outcome of antecedent economic and social inequalities. His research and publications have focused on experiences in the low-cost private rented sector and, most recently, the impacts of out of area placements by local authorities struggling to meet statutory housing duties.

 Steve is also the co-editor of the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice

Lorayne Wall MRTPI is the Head of Planning and Policy Friends of the Lake District, a 92-year-old independent landscape charity and membership organisation with a vision for thriving Cumbrian landscapes for nature, for people, forever. The charity also represents CPRE – The Countryside Charity in Cumbria, meaning they work across the county. Lorayne’s work includes coordinating the charity’s work of influencing planning proposals, policies and legislation affecting Cumbria’s landscapes, as well as working with communities to help them navigate the planning system and supporting the charity’s campaigns for policy change.

Lorayne has a BSc. in Geography and Environmental Management from the University of Central Lancashire and an MA (Dist.) in Town & County Planning from the University of the West of England. In 2013 she was the winner of the RTPI’s George Pepler International Award, using the award to study the concept of machizukuri (community building) in Japan. A proud Cumbrian herself, with a  long family history in the Lake District National Park, she joined Friends of the Lake District as Planning Officer in 2018 after almost 13 years in the local plans team at South Lakeland District Council, where her work involved environmental policy development, sustainability appraisal and neighbourhood planning; her final task at the council was as lead on the production of the first dedicated development plan document for an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Miriam’s practice and research sits at the intersection between grassroots organising, statutory services and policy. She has worked across London on long term regeneration housing projects, supporting and engaging the community with planning and development of masterplans as well as community-led organisational infrastructure. She has led national scale policy research into social and cultural infrastructure with the British Academy; inclusive methodologies with Natural England, and facilitated community sessions with MHCLG. She is currently a freelance consultant, facilitator and researcher at Homing Practices as well as CEO of East London Waterworks Park. 

Shelly Rouse MRTPI is a Planner with a passion for delivering support to local authorities and helping drive public sector improvement with housing delivery and land supply as her specialities.  She is national co-chair of Women in Planning - an organisation seeking to promote equality and diversity in the planning industry.  

Shelly started her career in local government and has worked for over 20 years across many planning specialisms including development management, planning policy and major site delivery roles. Previous roles include MHCLG and has worked at PAS since 2020; involved in local authority support & projects on development management practices, performance management, councillor training, peer reviews, local plan production, planning reforms, environmental assessment and housing numbers.

She is frequent blogger under the name @HouseyRousey and uses her expertise in local government resourcing issues including strategic workforce planning and assisted developing the new graduate scheme Pathways to Planning aimed at widening the talent pool of local authority planners.

Riëtte established and leads HTA Design’s award-winning planning team and is responsible for the practice’s Urban Planning. Her team of residential and residential-led mixed-use expert planners deliver bespoke planning advice and solutions to a wide range of clients from the public and private sector.

HTA’s planning team have delivered a significant portfolio of successful planning applications, including complex infill development, estate regeneration, masterplanning and design coding, and MMC development, working collaboratively with HTA Design teams and other architectural practices.

Riette is a strategic thinker with a passion for good design, evidenced through a creative approach to challenging planning constraints. She is closely involved in promoting HTA’s innovative solutions to solve the housing crisis, including the suburban intensification project ‘Supurbia’, and formulating how design practices can demonstrate social value through the design process itself, working towards long term well-being and lasting buildings.

Riëtte is a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, as required for all Chartered Planners. She previously served on an RTPI committee but no longer holds that role. She is currently Vice‑Chair of the London Planning and Development Forum, a practitioner forum bringing together public and private sector professionals to discuss current policy developments in planning, housing and design.

Councillor Husband was elected in May 2025 as a County Councillor for Chester-le-Street North.

Andrew Husband is the Leader of Durham County Council, with portfolio responsibilities including external partnerships, council strategy and the County Durham Plan. With 15 years of blue-chip corporate business, he brings a wealth of valuable board experience into this strategic role. Alongside these achievements he has also operated independently, creating hundreds of local jobs generating £10’s of millions of business into the local economy. An experienced politician since 2017, he has also stood in 2 general elections and he has worked hard to try and improve the prospects of the local area and it’s residents and will continue to do so. 

Richard has held his current position since being elected in May 2023. He came into the role with extensive experience of service development and partnership working with the public, private and community sectors. His achievements include leading key projects to integrate health, social care and housing services. Since his appointment he has ensured that housing is placed front and centre of the Council’s priorities. He has been instrumental in the development of the Council’s Local Plan which includes a 40% affordable home requirement along with a number of environmental and social measures.

Holly co-founded architecture and urbanism practice, We Made That, in 2006 and is a trusted voice in shaping healthy, fair and well-designed places. She cares deeply about locally-informed and impact-driven outcomes.

She is a registered architect and affiliate member of the Landscape Institute. She has led a unique range of urban projects for the practice, from pioneering industrial intensification work through to comprehensive high street regeneration projects. Holly advocates for community involvement within the design process, empowering women in the built environment and equitable city-making.

Holly is Mayor’s Design Advocate for the Greater London Authority and is a Design Council Expert. She has also contributed as a national High Streets Task Force Expert. Currently, she is the Town Architect for Hackney Central, chairs the Croydon Design Review Panel, and is a member of the Thanet Design Review Panel.

She was shortlisted for the AJ Emerging Woman Architect of the Year Award 2012, is a former trustee of The Architecture Foundation and lectures internationally.

Ella Harris is an academic and independent researcher with expertise in creative methods and ‘crisis cultures. She’s interested in how creative and inventive approaches to research can develop understanding of complex, intersecting crises with a particular focus on ‘compensatory’ forms of housing like tiny homes, micro housing, and pop-up accommodation. Ella’s books include Rebranding Precarity (Zed Books, 2020), Encountering the World with i-Docs (Bristol University Press, 2025), Reconstructing the American Dream (Intellect Press, 2025 with Mel Nowicki, Tim White and Cian Oba Smith) and the edited collection The Growing Trend of Living Small (Routledge, 2022, with Mel Nowicki and Tim White). Ella’s creative outputs include the co-created interactive documentary The Lockdown Game (press the remote to start!) and a card deck allowing young people to share their views on social and cultural infrastructure.

Stephen is a Founding Director & Chief Executive of Civic, and Fellow at the Landscape Institute. Recognising that the quality of our built environment is intrinsically linked to the wellbeing of our natural surroundings, Stephen champions striving for excellence and harmonising with nature to develop climatically resilient spaces that enhance lives and provide enriching experiences for our communities. He is passionate about urban infrastructure and sets about his work aiming to engineer less, reaching first for nature-based solutions and applying these principles with a high degree of emotional intelligence. This creative and inclusive system thinking approach sets Civic apart and has seen Stephen recognised as an industry expert in his field. He is also an ICE Policy Fellow, an Architecture & Design Scotland Panellist, Member of the Academy of Urbanism, a Design Council Associate and NLA Sounding Board member.