The impact of the credit crunch on the future regeneration of textile mills across Bradford district was under the spotlight at a major industry conference today.

Business leaders were meeting to discuss the success of developments including Salts Mill in Saltaire, Victoria Mills on the banks of the River Aire, Bradford’s Lister Mills and the former urban foundry at the Silens Works in Little Germany.

The Mills Regeneration Conference, held at the Wharfebank Business Centre – the former Otley Mill – has been bringing together people involved in the reuse of mills across northern England for 16 years.

The first conference was held at a time when mill regenerators were turning redundant floorspace into work for growing businesses, said conference co-ordinator Nigel Grizzard.

Since then more and more mills have been turned into apartments for young professionals moving to fill huge developments in places such as Bradford and Shipley and across the region.

However, Mr Grizzard said the tide was again turning for developers who were failing to sell apartments because homebuyers can no longer afford them as the credit crunch bites.

“It is one of the biggest issues we’re discussing,” he said. “In the 1990s, people were turning mills into industrial units to help people who had been made redundant, then they started converting them to flats. But there is no point converting them if you cannot sell them. There has been a lot of interest this year about going back to industrial units and that may be where the future lies.”

Mr Grizzard was presenting his paper on the north’s top ten mills at the conference, focusing on conversions he thinks have made a lasting impression on the region’s regeneration.

He said: “There are so many examples I could have included.

“But the ten I chose all have special merit. I also have been loose with my definition of mill and have included warehouses and a foundry.”

A spokesman for Urban Splash, the company behind the Lister Mills development, said: “Urban Splash treats every new development as a blank canvas, and the use of a development will be dictated by the architecture of the building as well as what is happening in the local and surrounding areas.

“Lister Mills has outline planning consent for a mixed use development and, while the completed phase Silk Warehouse and the current phase Velvet Mill are both primarily residential, future phases will include both commercial and residential phases, as the building lends itself to both.”

The history of the textile industry was due to be discussed at the conference, as will the impact of environmental legislation and the ecological challenges for mill developers.