UKREiiF is the UK’s leading forum for real estate, investment and infrastructure, and from 19 to 21 May 2026 it returns to Leeds bigger than ever – an expanded footprint, a revamped programme, and 16,000+ senior decision-makers in one place. It’s the moment the UK living sector takes stock. Utopi is showing up as Gold Partner of the Housed Shared Living Summit, and on two of the Summit’s headline panels: EU Marketing Director Chanel Turner-Ross is moderating Beyond Labels: The End of Residential Silos?, and Co-Founder & CMO Ben Roberts is speaking on In a Trump World.
Beyond Labels and In a Trump World are two halves of the same argument. Both ask whether the sector’s old certainties – clean asset class boundaries, ESG as a branding layer – still hold up against operational reality. In a market that loves its categories, do the categories still describe what’s actually happening in the buildings?
When the labels stop telling the story, the data has to.
The First Question: Do The Labels Still Describe How People Live?
The boundaries between PBSA, Build-To-Rent, and Coliving are blurring on the ground. Students are taking Coliving rooms over the summer. Young professionals are staying in PBSA between leases. Single-family BTR overlaps with traditional rental in ways the early thesis didn’t anticipate. The way people live has moved on. Planning use classes, tenancy regimes and investor mandates have not.
If a building can no longer be cleanly classified, its asset class label can’t be the proxy for its quality, its ESG credentials, or its operational performance. Investment-grade environmental sensor data can. Structured, timestamped, defensible. Aligned with SFDR Article 8 reporting requirements. Available on demand. That’s the substitute for the certainty the labels used to offer, and it’s how mixed-typology portfolios get assessed on a like-for-like basis instead of being forced back into boxes that no longer fit.
The market is already moving in this direction. Knight Frank’s 2025 ESG Property Investor Survey found nearly half of all institutional investors now require whole-building energy consumption data before acquisition. CBRE’s European 2026 PBSA Outlook is sharper still, naming operational efficiency, energy optimisation and new technology as the route to NOI growth in the year ahead.
That’s the conversation Chanel is putting to her panel: Alex Gooch at LOFT, Michael Woodford at White Arkitekter, and Kelly-anne Watson at The Class Foundation. Three operators and thinkers who have already moved past the old taxonomy and are designing, building and running stock that doesn’t fit it.
Categories will keep shifting. Performance evidence is what holds.
Beyond Labels: The End of Residential Silos? The Department, UKREiiF Tuesday 19 May, 14:00
The Second Question: Does Sustainability Survive a Political Shift?
In some markets, ESG and social impact commitments are being softened or quietly walked back. In Europe, the direction of travel hasn’t changed. Standards are rising, not falling. The Renters’ Rights Act takes effect on 1 May, days before UKREiiF opens, and the Building Safety Levy lands in October. Behind both, Awaab’s Law is extending into the private rented sector and SFDR Article 8 expectations are being firmed up rather than relaxed. The operators building the evidence base now will be the ones best placed when these deadlines arrive.
Sustainability is not a branding exercise to be retired when politics shifts. It’s an asset management tool, and it’s being proven as one with real, demonstrable ROI.
The numbers make the case. Across our deployments, we typically see an average 20% reduction in energy consumption. Continuous water temperature monitoring can cut manual Legionella flushing requirements by up to 90%, with full alignment to HSE ACOP L8 and HSG274. And proactive damp and mould scoring builds the audit trail Awaab’s Law now mandates.
These are not ESG nice-to-haves. They are operating cost lines, liability lines, and asset-value lines on the same page as occupancy and rent. Operators with data already in place are positioned for what’s coming.
Ben is on that panel alongside Laura Kurt at Fusion Students, Stephanie Smith at Muse, and Jak Wellard at Evolution Sustainability Group, with Brendan Geraghty of The Association for Rental Living moderating. A group of operators and advisors who have watched the rhetoric shift and are getting on with the work regardless.
In a Trump World The Department, UKREiiF Wednesday 20 May, 11:00
What Both Panels Lead to
Six years. 78,000+ rooms. 13 countries. 50bn+ environmental data points.
That’s the intelligence we’re bringing to Leeds. The sector is moving past labels, and past posturing, into an operational reality where what gets measured gets managed, and what gets evidenced gets financed. Categories are losing their grip. Slogans are losing theirs. The buildings are still there, full of residents, generating bills, regulated by frameworks that aren’t going anywhere.
The opportunity is to look closely at what those buildings are actually doing, and let the answers shape what comes next.
If you’re at UKREiiF and you want to talk about what that looks like across your portfolio, come and find us at the Housed Shared Living Summit, or book a meeting with the team in advance.
Find Utopi at UKREiiF 19 to 21 May 2026, Leeds Gold Partner, Housed Shared Living Summit
More on the Summit: https://www.housedpodcast.com/summit