UK Residential Planning

Yolande is a practice professor who spent 33 years researching property markets in industry before joining UCL as Chair of the Bartlett Real Estate Institute in 2018. As head of World Research at Savills, she took a global, cross-sector view of real estate and became increasingly interested in very long run trends.

Her work at UCL is deliberately unfocussed, looking at the combination and interaction of disruptive trends in demographics, finance, technology, society, the environment, and governments in changing global real estate. She believes that real estate, meaning land and everything attached to it, is at the heart of sustainability. Understanding real estate value in all its forms is therefore essential to solving the wicked problems and grand challenges of the 21^st century. To this end, she sees as imperative the communication of knowledge and the activation of partnerships between academia and industry.

Anthony is the CEO of Twindig the property data company.  Prior to joining Twindig Anthony was a Managing Director at Jefferies Investment Bank where he led their European Residential research team, where his housebuilder clients included Bovis, Galliford Try, McCarthy & Stone, Taylor Wimpey and Watkin Jones.  Anthony was involved in the Redfern Review into housing supply and the Letwin Review into land banking.

Ed is Head of Residential Investments. He is responsible for leading Europa’s residential activity in the UK and Europe in line with the business’ strategy of seeking mispriced risk on behalf of its clients. Ed works closely with the fund management, transactions and asset management teams across Europa to oversee its existing residential portfolio, grow its network of local partners, whilst also collaborating with its in-house research capability to identify new opportunities.

Ed has over 20 years’ experience in real estate markets, joining Europa from Savills where he has spent the last 13 months as a director in the operational capital markets team, advising clients on transactions across the UK and European residential markets. Prior to that, he spent 15 years in fund management at abdrn, including eight years as Head of UK Residential Investment where he oversaw the formation and implementation of the UK residential business. He sat on the BPF Build to Rent committee since its inception, the AREF Residential Committee and is Deputy Chair of the SPF Residential Investment Committee.  Ed received a BSc in Land Management from the University of Reading where he was President of the Students’ Union and is a Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

Matthew specialises in planning for residential development, particularly urban extensions, new settlements, and related infrastructure, and has advised on - and provided due diligence for - recent M&A transactions in the house building and land promotion sector. He is recognised for his work on research and policy advocacy; his February 2023 analysis for the Home Builders Federation on the impact on housing supply of the Government’s changes to national planning policy featured in debates across the media and in parliament. In 2016 he was an advisor on the Secretary of State’s Local Plans Expert Group. He is a seasoned expert witness at public inquiries and examinations. He is currently leading the Lichfields team advising DLUHC on multiple strands of its digital planning reform programme.

He has worked for Lichfields for 22 years; and is now Head of its 100-strong London office. Lichfields is the UK’s pre-eminent planning and development consultancy – independent, employee-owned and with 250 people operating out of nine offices. Matthew is also a non-Executive Director of Repton Property Developments – the housing development company established by Norfolk County Council to develop its surplus land for housing – and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Matt Richards is a Director in Savills London Planning team with over 20 years experience in both public and private sector.  Matt deals with a range of planning projects including significant residential developments across London and the Southeast.