Jon Barnard, Director
A first perspective on UKREiiF
This was my first time at UKREiiF. I’d heard a lot about it beforehand, the scale of it, the energy, the sheer number of conversations happening in parallel — but you don’t really understand what that means until you’re stood in the middle of it. It’s busy, in a way I’m still recovering from two weeks later. But once you settle into the rhythm of it, the value becomes obvious. It’s not really about the sessions or the panels, although some of those are excellent. It’s about the conversations that spin off from them, the ones that happen over coffee or while you’re queuing for the next thing.
What struck me most was the ambition still sitting across the public sector. Every region I spoke to has a pipeline. Every authority has schemes it’s pushing hard to deliver, often against a backdrop that makes that harder than it should be. That ambition is real, and it’s good to be reminded of it.
What’s changed — and I noticed this quite quickly — is how fast conversations move past the “what” and into the “how.” A few years ago you could talk about a project’s vision for a while before anyone pushed you on delivery. That’s not really the case anymore. People want to know how something actually gets built, who’s accountable for it, and what happens if things don’t go to plan.
I’ll be honest, I found that reassuring rather than daunting. When I was working in local authority as a client, on the delivery side of major transport and infrastructure schemes, that was always the conversation I wanted to be having from the start. Vision matters, but it only really means something once you can show how it gets built. Hearing that expectation baked into the event itself, rather than something you had to fight for, felt like real progress.
Representing Norfolk and reflecting on place
As a Norfolk Ambassador, it was genuinely encouraging to see Norfolk represented with confidence this year. Through the Norfolk Business Board and the wider presence across the week, there was a real effort to position Norfolk and the East as a region with substance behind its opportunity, not just potential, but a delivery story people could actually believe in. There’s a lot happening across the region that deserves a wider audience, and UKREiiF is exactly the kind of platform that can put it in front of the right people.
One session that’s stayed with me is the Birketts panel on placemaking, which Trevor Holden took part in. It went further than most discussions on the topic manage to. Rather than stopping at a definition, it got into what placemaking actually looks like in practice, and how it connects to devolution and the Local Government Review currently reshaping how this country is governed. The point that landed hardest for me was simple: placemaking isn’t abstract. It’s about how people experience the places they live in, how identity holds together, and how that sits alongside structural change happening above their heads.
I’ve found myself thinking about that since, particularly in relation to Norfolk and the LGR structure that’s recently been announced. For a lot of people across North Norfolk, South Norfolk, Broadland and Breckland, those names and identities are going to shift, at least on paper. That raises real questions about continuity, and about belonging — not just for residents, but for the people working inside these structures day to day. I feel a strong pull of identity towards being from West Norfolk myself, so it’s hard not to think about how that sense of place holds up as the governance around it changes shape.
There’s probably no single reaction to that. Some excitement about what’s possible. Curiosity about what comes next. And, I think, a fair bit of empathy for the people managing that transition while still trying to support the communities affected by it. The placemaking panel brought that home for me — these changes aren’t just organisational charts being redrawn. They’re human. Placemaking, at its core, is about people, and any structural change of this scale will be judged as much on how well it preserves identity and connection as on what it builds.
Clarity makes the difference
One thing kept coming up, again and again, across the whole week: clarity.
The schemes that drew the most genuine engagement weren’t necessarily the biggest or the most ambitious. They were the ones that were easiest to understand. You could see what the project was trying to achieve, how it intended to get there, and roughly what the next milestone looked like. That doesn’t strip out complexity — these are still complicated, multi-layered schemes we’re talking about — but it gives people something to engage with properly. They can challenge it, test it, work out where they might fit in. Without that clarity, conversations stay surface-level for a lot longer than anyone wants.
Governance sits alongside this, even when nobody’s talking about it directly. You pick it up in the way people describe a project — who’s actually leading it, how decisions get made, how quickly things can move when they need to. Where that feels clear, a scheme carries more credibility almost immediately. Where it doesn’t, the conversation slows right down, and people start asking questions that should have already been answered.
For local authorities, this matters more than it might seem to on paper. Governance isn’t just an internal structure sat in a delivery plan somewhere. It’s something the market reads and reacts to, often within the first few minutes of a conversation. I remember sitting on the client side of programmes where governance was genuinely strong, and you could feel the difference in how partners and funders engaged with us — there was a confidence in the room that simply wasn’t there on schemes where the lines of accountability were murkier.
There’s still plenty of investor interest out there, but it’s become more selective. I noticed the conversations that went furthest were almost always centred on schemes that felt genuinely ready to progress, not just well-presented. And you could see the same pattern play out at a regional level. The pavilions that worked best weren’t the ones trying to showcase everything they had. They picked a handful of priority schemes, told a realistic delivery story about each one, and let those conversations do the work. It’s a smarter approach, and it clearly pays off.
What this means if you’re heading there next year
If I take one thing away from the week, it’s this: getting the early stages right matters more than it used to.
The projects that felt strongest were the ones where someone had done the work upfront — scope, cost, programme, risk, all pulled together early enough to give the scheme some real structure to stand on. That doesn’t mean every answer needs to be locked down. It means the project is easier to explain in five minutes, easier to stress-test, and easier to move forward once the right people are in the room. That’s exactly what I used to look for when I was on the client side, sat across the table from delivery partners — not a perfect plan, but evidence that the fundamentals had genuinely been worked through together, rather than assembled separately and stitched together at the last minute. In this market, that early groundwork is increasingly what separates schemes that gain momentum from those that quietly stall.
It’s also worth saying that very few projects are being shaped in isolation anymore. Most schemes now involve public and private sector input from an early stage, and there’s an expectation that those relationships already exist and are properly understood, not bolted on for the purposes of a pitch. It’s less about ticking a box that says the right partners are involved, and more about whether those arrangements genuinely support delivery once things get underway. That, in my experience, is where credibility is really built or lost.
So if you’re a local authority weighing up whether UKREiiF is worth the time next year, my honest advice is this: treat it as a working environment, not a showcase. Bring fewer projects, but bring them properly prepared. A handful of schemes you can talk through in real depth will get you further than a wide portfolio pitched at a high level. The conversations that matter happen when someone can ask you a hard question and you’ve already thought about the answer.
Where this leaves us
UKREiiF felt like an honest snapshot of where the sector actually is right now. Still ambitious, certainly. But more considered with it, more focused on what delivery actually requires, and more clear-eyed about the obstacles in the way.
That’s exactly the territory we work in at Greyfriars. Making public sector projects work harder, sharpening delivery so schemes don’t just get approved but actually land, and making sure the benefit reaches the communities they’re built for. The clearer and more grounded a project is from the start, the better the conversations it generates, and the further it travels. In a market that’s only getting more selective, that early clarity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the thing that decides whether a scheme moves or stalls.
I’m already looking forward to next year.