Housing associations ‘raising their game’ on delivery ambitions, new Homes England director says

The principle is for there to be “no wrong door to Homes England” and to “hide the wires for partners”, Ms Nugent told Inside Housing in an interview at the conference.

“I think what changes fundamentally [with the new regional model] is that if a housing association wants to bring forward a project, and comes to the local regional team, they haven’t then got to go off and speak to 30 other people to get to an answer,” she added.

The new Midlands director said the agency wants to work with “different scales of housing association” in order to “support homes of all quantities”.

“We want to do everything from the smaller housing association who might have a 10-home rural extension to a village... right through to the top, the largest RPs operational in England,” she said.

On working with combined authorities and metro mayors, which have been allocated £7bn under the SAHP, Ms Nugent said the new model allows Homes England to “bring all the various disciplines” within the organisation “to bear on a particular project that has been identified as a priority for those mayors”.

She said the agency’s strategic place partnership model will “evolve to make sure that the mayors have the opportunity to monitor and steer the activity of Homes England”.

Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram has this week announced plans for a new mayoral development corporation and a £2bn investment fund, as part of his pitch to investors at MIPIM.

Ms Gillespie told Inside Housing that the agency is “seeing real momentum across the country” when it comes to development corporations and other types of “intensely focused, place-based teams” that drive delivery, such as public-private partnerships.

On the SAHP bidding process, which opened at the end of last month, she said the sector is “really responding to the ambition” set by the government.

“In conversations around MIPIM, partners are coming to talk to us around the scale of their ambition running into many thousands of homes over a 10-year cycle, and the ability to really plan the supply chain and take on a broader suite of projects together,” she said.

Ms Gillespie continued: “We are seeing ambitious bids coming forward. I think the clarity around rent settlements has obviously been really helpful for the partners.

“But there’s a number of housing associations out here at MIPIM as well. So it is a more joined-up conversation around how those programmes for development align with the ambitions of places, as well as [with] the needs of people, as well as with the business plans for housing associations.

“And we’ve seen a number of partners really raising their game in that regard, in terms of the level of ambition that they have.”

She also said a number of landlords can act as “key players” within larger-scale opportunities such as regeneration schemes, or “emerging proposals around new towns”.

“The sector is signalling very strongly that it’s here as a credible partner, alongside institutional investors, alongside SMEs and developers – it’s a really important part of that jigsaw that helps to create places,” Ms Gillespie added.

The director was an advisor for the New Towns Taskforce and will continue to lead the agency’s work on new towns alongside her new North West regional director role.

The government is expected to publish its consultation on new towns soon, with its own list of proposed locations following Strategic Environmental Assessments into each of the taskforce’s 12 locations.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook said in January that the government has a clear objective for 40% affordable housing in new towns, but that viability issues cannot be discounted.

When asked about this target, Ms Gillespie told Inside Housing that “the tools are there to deliver the level of ambition for affordable housing, particularly with the size of the affordable homes programme”.

“So it’s absolutely right and proper we look at what the land value can support, back to those points on viability, but there is the largest affordable homes programme we’ve ever had in this country, so there is an ability to align funds and [provide] viability support,” she said.