Cllr Darren Rodwell

Leader
London Borough of Barking & Dagenham

Darren has been Leader of Barking and Dagenham since 2014. He has served as Deputy Chair of London Councils, having been Executive Member for City Development and now as the Executive Member for Housing and Planning. In his current role he has promoted inward investment in the capital via Opportunity London and prioritised the delivery of affordable housing, addressing fire safety, tackling homelessness and reducing the use of temporary accommodation. 

Darren is also a member of the Homes for Londoners Board, Arts Council England, the Arts Council for London and the Create London Board and, since May 2023 Chair of the LGA Local Infrastructure and Net Zero Board. He was awarded LGIU Leader of the Year Award in 2019. In 2021, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education by Coventry University in recognition of his efforts to expand educational opportunities in Barking and Dagenham.

Cath Shaw

Deputy Chief Executive
Barnet Council

As Deputy Chief Executive of Barnet Council, Cath is responsible for the Council’s extensive housing and growth programme, environmental services, and major commercial relationships. She is a Director of the Council’s joint venture company with Related Argent to deliver Brent Cross Town – a park town for future London including 6,700 new homes, 50 acres of green space, workspace for 25,000 people, three schools, a new station and other amenities and infrastructure. Cath sits on London Councils Economy Board and the New London Architecture Sounding Board, and Chairs the West London Economy and Skills Directors Group. She joined Barnet in 2013 from Harlow Council where she was Assistant Chief Executive responsible for Growth and Regeneration. Prior to that she was a senior civil servant, undertaking a variety of roles including as Deputy Director of the Social Exclusion Unit responsible for children and young people’s issues. She stepped down as a Board Member of the Peabody Trust in 2019 on completion of her maximum term of appointment, remaining on the Development and Thamesmead Committees until March 2022.

Dawn Wylie

Land Director
Weston Homes plc

Dawn joined Weston Homes in 2006 as part of the the Company’s Management Trainee scheme after completing her A-Levels, and she achieved a First-Class Honours degree in Real Estate Management in 2012. She was promoted to Senior Land Manager in January 2015 and held responsibility for all the Company’s land acquisitions from April 2015.

Dawn was appointed a Director of Weston Homes Plc in June 2016 at the age of 29. Notably since that time she has recently agreed terms to purchase the Abbey Retail Park in Barking, on which the company are seeking to deliver a mixed use regeneration scheme which will bring over 1000 new homes and new commercial spaces around a central plaza on the riverside, as well as securing a deal with Tesco that will involve the construction of a new superstore and the provision of around 1300 new homes on the site of their current Goodmayes superstore. She is also actively involved in the recruitment of young people into the Company’s apprenticeship schemes, and the promotion of careers in the construction and property industry within schools and youth groups. She is particularly keen to attract women into the housebuilding sector.

Amanprit Arnold

Property X-Change Lead
GLA

Amanprit is an urban strategist. She has delivered urban advisory services and participated in city-building practices in both the non-profit and public sector. She has worked on realising a wide range of projects and scales, from city-wide research to energy infrastructure planning, from regeneration to accessible and inclusive design. She is currently the Property X-Change Lead at GLA which is an inclusive and innovative platform to bring together diverse voices across the sector, share experience and fresh ideas to create thriving high street property for all. As a Deaf changemaker, she is on a mission to achieve a DeafCity Hub, London's first innovative mixed-use cultural space for the Deaf community and to pave the way for best-practice inclusive design.

John Long

Director
igloo

John is an executive Director on the board of Igloo Regeneration – the UK’s leading ethical developer. Igloo was the first real estate business in the UK to become a B Corp. Its purpose is ‘to make Places that People love, and the Planet needs’. John helps make that purpose become a reality. A chartered surveyor by background, John has worked in the regeneration development sector for 18 years, helping teams to conceive and deliver positive place-based social and environmental impact through responsible property investment and development. He leads Igloo’s relationships on key projects such as Oakfield in Swindon (with Nationwide Building Society) and the central Winchester Regeneration scheme (with Winchester City Council).

Graeme Craig

Director & Chief Executive
Places for London

Graeme is the Chief Executive of Places for London, the company responsible for the management and development of Transport for London’s (TfL’s) commercial property estate across the capital. Places for London is wholly owned by TfL. Places for London’s portfolio comprises some £2bn of assets, with over 2,000 commercial tenancies, including over 1,000 retail units in and around London’s stations and High Streets and over 850 railway arches. 95 per cent of Places for London’s tenants are Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, making Places for London one of the most important supporters of new business in London. Over the next decade, Places for London will start building 20,000 homes in a multi-£bn programme that will see high-amenity, mid-density, low-carbon homes delivered in dozens of sites across London. Work has already started on sites delivering more than 3,350 homes, with a further 800 homes already completed. Places for London is taking forward this programme with partners including Ballymore, Barratt London, Delancey, Grainger, Native Land and Notting Hill Genesis. Places for London is targeting 50 per cent affordable housing on average across its developments.

Phil Ryan

Director – City Futures, Global Insight
JLL

Phil Ryan is a director of JLL’s Global Insight platform with a focus on the group’s City Futures program based out of London. In his role, he focuses on the structural changes underway with respect to urban development, best practices in large-scale regeneration, identifying innovation hot-spots and analysing commercial real estate performance in both emerging and mature growth clusters. In his previous role, Phil was the director of JLL’s U.S. Office Research platform in New York, where he focused on both national and local trends in the office market across more than 50 metro areas, with an emphasis on integrating economic and demographic data into real estate analysis, outlooks and decision-making as well as contributing to JLL’s quarterly office report suite and industry-specific reporting.