Toby Lloyd

Toby Lloyd is a housing and regeneration policy expert, with over fifteen years experience of policy, strategy, communications and campaigning in the public, private and voluntary sectors. He currently works in partnership with Rose Grayston through their consultancy, On Place. Together with analyst Neal Hudson they co-authored a 2023 report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on how government should respond to the UK’s emerging housing market downturn.

Toby was the chair of No Place Left Behind: the Commission into Prosperity and Community Placemaking, set up by the Create Streets Foundation in 2020 to explore the potential for community empowerment and placemaking to improve lives and neighbourhoods in left behind places.

He worked in No 10 Downing Street as the Prime Minister’s Special Adviser on housing and local government until July 2019, where he was responsible for increasing funding for social housing, lifting the borrowing cap on councils’ Housing Revenue Accounts, and initiating the reform of the private rented sector. 

Before entering government he was head of policy for Shelter, the leading housing and homelessness charity, where his blogs, policy, research and campaigns work helped shape the national debate and put housing at the top of the national political agenda. In 2014 he led a cross-industry proposal for a new garden city that was the runner-up in the Wolfson Economics Prize 2014. 

Previously he led Navigant Consulting’s policy and strategy division, where he advised local and national government, private developers and housing associations on development, planning and regeneration, and was a senior policy manager for the Greater London Authority working on the regeneration of the Thames Gateway and the London 2012 Olympic Games. 

His book, Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, co-authored with two UCL economists, was published in 2017. He is a regular conference speaker and commentator in mainstream and specialist media. He is a Fellow of think tanks Onward and Create Streets, and an Honorary Associate Professor at UCL.