Over the past few years, Structural Timber Conferences have circled around the same key themes: boosting UK forestry, treating timber as a carbon store, and improving design efficiency while tackling the usual fire, moisture, flood, and disease risks. This year was no different, though some conversations felt a bit more grounded.

It was interesting to be back, this time listening and networking as a consultant with a mass timber background, now looking more broadly across low-carbon materials. After a decade designing purely in timber, I’m trying to see things through a wider lens, not just engineered wood but also stone, timber frames, and other materials that make sense for low-carbon construction in the UK. What makes me optimistic at Webb Yates is our drive to explore solutions and make the difficult decisions needed to move things forward.

A clear thread running through the sessions was home-grown timber. Apart from a few exceptions, it wasn’t a supplier-focused conference, and there were hardly any European mass timber suppliers. This fits with where the conference’s attention lies – systems that can scale with reduced upfront investment. The UK is still in a cautious phase, shaped by post-Grenfell regulation, combustible material bans, and insurance hurdles. That caution makes it tough for new timber typologies to find their way into mainstream practice. It was reassuring to hear positive notes on insurability and informed clients, and hopefully this will continue to grow and translate into regulatory restrictions becoming less of a burden.

Architype’s work stood out for pushing risk-compliant timber systems using Larsen trusses and fully UK-manufactured components. Some timber framers are also putting serious money into robotics and digital fabrication for flat-pack and volumetric systems. The big takeaway from the talks on timber trade, forestry and framing technology was clear. The UK needs to grow more of its own material, make better use of what’s available locally, and learn from Europe’s openness and long-term strategy.

What’s still missing is a coherent vision. Investment won’t come without clear direction on forestry pipelines, timber housing, carbon incentives, and other policy levers that give progressive companies a reason to commit.

The idea of “substitution” came up again. Not everything needs to be built in timber, but we should replace high-carbon materials wherever low-carbon options make sense. Some questions missed the point, like why we can’t just build timber ground floors as the Victorians did. We’ve got enough evidence now to know timber performs best when kept off the ground. That’s where stone could take on a bigger role, not just the usual concrete.

A few project presentations showed what’s possible even with a challenging brief and restrictive context. Paradise was a good example, dealing with tricky urban conditions, moisture management, and fire performance while showing how CLT and glulam can still add value when framing alone doesn’t fit. The Optoppen tool was another highlight, showing collaborative approaches to delivering volume, not always mass timber but smart, low-carbon design. Now that I’ve seen a demo, I’m curious to try it out — especially given its interesting backstory with European partners and contexts. I’m keen to explore how it performs in practice and how useful the inputs and outputs really are in practice.

Overall, the direction feels positive. There’s more interest in home-grown materials, more digital and robotic capability, and a growing confidence in the industry’s own potential. But to really move forward, the UK timber sector still needs clearer signals, steadier investment, and a willingness to keep learning from Europe, both in practice and in strategy.