Tom Bloxham MBE

Group Chairman
Urban Splash

The company is responsible for development projects across the country, including Manchester, Liverpool, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford Sheffield, Bristol, Plymouth, North Shields and Morecambe. In 1999 Tom was awarded an MBE for Services to Architecture and Urban Regeneration.

Tom also upholds a number of other positions including;Chairman of Manchester International Festival, and trustee of Tate, the Manchester United Foundation and The Bloxham Charitable Trust.

In 2016, Tom and Urban Splash co-founder Jonathan launched House by Urban Splash – their modular housing concept which is being rolled out across the country. House is created using modern methods of construction allowing for customer specification. The first homes are completed, fully sold and occupied at sites in Manchester, Salford and North Shields, with other modular homes on sale in Manchester, Birmingham and soon to launch in Cambridge, Walsall, the Wirral and Milton Keynes.

Ged Fitzgerald

Chief Executive
Liverpool City Council

Lynda Shillaw

Divisional Chief Executive for Property
Manchester Airports Group

Lynda Shillaw joined Manchester Airports Group (MAG) as Divisional Chief Executive Officer for Property in June 2014.

Lynda joined from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership where she held the role of Director of Real Estate. The role at MAG reports to Group CEO Charlie Cornish, and oversees the group’s £571m property division across its four airports. The existing portfolio also includes the £800m Airport City development at Manchester Airport.

Graduating in 1986 with a degree in Accountancy and Finance, Lynda has had a strong 20+ year career in the property industry, where she has headed Co-operative Estates plus roles at Lloyds Banking Group and BT where she worked for 18 years.

She has also held executive positions as a pension fund Trustee, an Environment Commissioner, a member of AGMA’s Business Leadership Council and a BT Regional Director. She is a Chartered Management Accountant with a degree in Accounting and Finance. 

Bronwen Rapley

Group Chief Executive
Onward Homes

After 12 years as a property lawyer, Bronwen joined the housing profession working at what became Your Housing Group.  She led on governance and legal and delivered some major growth and regeneration projects.  She moved to the HCA in 2013 where she was responsible for housing associations who were not complying with the regulatory standards and the regulator’s response to insolvency.  In 2016 she joined Onward Homes as Chief Executive. Onward Homes has 41,000 homes across the north west and is an agent for large scale regeneration in many of those communities.

Richard Upton

Chief Executive
U+I

Richard is a creative entrepreneur and patron of the arts, who is passionate about quality of place, architecture, heritage and provenance. Over the course of his career, he has established, built and sold four property investment and professional companies and developed more than six million square feet of mixed-use real estate.

Pioneering Mount Anvil in 1991, Richard delivered 5,000 student bedrooms and regenerated several award-wining social housing projects. In 1998 he co-founded Cathedral Healthcare and Cathedral Group PLC, nurturing the latter to become a market-leader in public-private partnership developments and building a pipeline of over £2bn.

In 2014, Cathedral merged with Development Securities, which ultimately became U+I in 2015. U+I is a listed public company with a development pipeline of >£11.5bn. Together with U+I’s Chief Executive Matthew Weiner, Richard is a driving force behind the strategic direction of the company, whose vision is to create long-lasting social and economic change for communities and sustainable value for shareholders.