I spent Tuesday at Ecobuild and was on the panel for the opening session 'Ready for the future? What's next for sustainable housing'. I was joined by three other brilliant speakers: Tony Pidgely from Berkeley Group, Dan Batterton from Legal & General and Bevan Jones from Sustainable Homes, with the session chaired by Julie Hirigoyen of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC).

Tony was up first and called for sustainable homes to be integrated into good placemaking, noting that there is still a lot of red tape slowing down development. Dan followed with the investment challenges faced, while Bevan highlighted the need for affordable homes to be sustainable and low cost to run.

As a UKGBC Future Leader, my talk focused on the design of our built environment from city scale to homes and surroundings. I concluded with a call to action from designers, developers, clients and investors – asking the audience to remember, we are responsible for the number of lives we change and not just the number of homes we build.