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Homes England: what’s in a name?

As the year begins with a series of rebrands of key housing bodies, Pete Apps takes a look at the significance of the Homes and Communities Agency’s switch to Homes England.  Illustration by Dom McKenzie

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Is @HomesEngland just a re-brand or a significant change? #ukhousing

As Juliet once pondered: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The English housing sector joined Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lover last week in considering this question. In the space of four days, the sector was gifted with a newly named government department (or ministry), cabinet secretary, regulator and state investment agency.

The emerging consensus is that while none of the rebrands were unwelcome, it is the last of these – the investment side of the Homes and Communities Agency relaunching as Homes England, now an entirely separate organisation from the regulator – which has the most practical significance.


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In an interview with Inside Housing, Nick Walkley, the organisation’s chief executive, set out some ambitious plans for how the agency is going to work with the housing association sector.

Essentially, the plan is to move away from the old model of grant distribution to a new way of working – sitting down with associations which have large development ambitions and working out what Homes England can do to support them.

This means grant, but it also means finance, technical expertise, compulsory purchase powers and what many people have described as the missing piece of the puzzle: land.

Homes England is in charge of disposing of vast swathes of the public land portfolio and since the Autumn Budget last year has direct powers to buy.

“We’re moving from what was a bit like a parent and child relationship, a bit of a bureaucratic relationship at times, to one where we sit down and look at how we can use the full range of our powers to help [associations],” says Mr Walkley.

“It sounds like Homes England wants to have a much more mature relationship with us.”

So is this a welcome move? “It’s a direction of travel Nick has been signalling since his appointment,” says Mark Henderson, chief executive of Home Group. “We are already having interesting discussions with them about how we bundle things up. It’s about them offering a range of things to us, rather than a pre-prescribed approach.”

Sinead Butters, chief executive of Aspire and chair of the Placeshapers group of housing associations, says: “It sounds like Homes England wants to have a much more mature relationship with us, and we are all for it.”

This positive response is reflected elsewhere, although one chief executive does point out that “there is still a place” for simple grant giving for less complex schemes.

Mr Walkley is also open to working with housing associations as groups, rather than simply as individuals.

“We are already talking to a number of housing associations as individuals, but also as groups,” he says. “The question is which associations have got long-term plans for serious development, and then what commitments do they need from us to make that happen. That will be different in different parts of the country – it might not be on a one-to-one basis, it might be on a place basis.”

Ms Butters says her members are keen to explore this approach. “I have got a view that we have got to collaborate more anyway,” she says. “We should be taking the opportunity to work together, rather than in competition.”

Mr Henderson says he “never rules anything out” in this regard, but sounds a note of caution against making the desire for partnership “too prescriptive”.

Overall, the response to the new regime is positive. “The offer to work flexibly in partnership is something the sector has been calling for, for many years. It’s genuinely refreshing to see this energy and commitment from Homes England,” says Helen Collins, head of the housing consultancy at Savills.

Overall, the response to the new regime is positive.

“The challenge is to convert theory to practice. What Nick is talking about represents a significant shift from a familiar and proven administrative process-led approach – well understood by Homes England staff and partners – to a much more demanding and entrepreneurial way of working. Do Homes England and its partners have the people power – skills, capacity and infrastructure – to deliver?”

This remains one area where there is some scepticism: the deliverability of Mr Walkley’s ambitions within the constraints of the public sector.

As one senior sector figure points out, if you are good at land assembly you can make a lot of money in the current market. Will Mr Walkley have the purse power to draw in and retain the staff he needs to realise his vision?

One area where this will be tested is the agency’s compulsory purchase order (CPO) powers. Mr Walkley believes these could make a big difference in bringing tricky sites to market.

“It puts us in a strong position to help people who are stuck with a site they want to bring through,” he says. “It’s not our intention to CPO land all across the country but where we feel there has been a fair offer made and it’s holding back a really positive development that could deliver a lot of homes, we can try and speed that process up.”

This is something sector figures suggest could be a big help – particularly in bringing forward the brownfield sites government wants developed, town centre regenerations and out-of-town retail sites increasingly made redundant by the digital age.

He is also keen to support housing associations that want to push the boundaries of new technology, such as offsite manufacturing.

This has been a preoccupation of development teams at housing associations for many years. Landlords such as Accord and, more recently, Swan have their own factories – and other associations are involved with the offsite industry in one way or another as it attempts to make the step from a fledgling part of the market to the mainstream.

At-a-glance: the rebrands of public bodies

A number of housing-related government bodies or agencies have changed their names or make-up following Theresa May's reshuffle:

  • The Ministry of Housing, Communties and Local Government is the new name for the Department of Communitites and Local Government
  • Homes England is the name of the body carrying out the function of the Homes and Communities Agency's (HCA) investment arm
  • The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) is the name of the new English regulator which will carry out the work done by the HCA's regulation arm. Both RSH and Homes England will remain legally part of the HCA until legislation is enacted to establish them as standalone bodies.

“We are actively promoting modular through land disposals. We are supporting a number of organisations,” Mr Walkley says. “Our aspiration is: where people want to innovate in modular, we can support them by adding land to the pipeline.”

He is clear, however, that these inducements to increase development are not a blank cheque. Homes England is employed to achieve the aims of a government which cares about numbers, and will want to see a return on its investment in associations.

“I have already been quite challenging to the housing association sector. My view here is we are now in a very different position to a few years ago – [associations] have the rent settlement agreed, they have the balance sheet capacity and now they need to get on and build,” he says.

“We will see some associations striking out with some really challenging programmes we want to support and the question is for boards of other associations: why are you not part of that? It’s not about punitive measures – I don’t want to run that kind of agency.”

“The important thing is volume and great places – and you don’t get great places with only one form of tenure," Nick Walkley

In a change in tone from this time two years ago, the focus is no longer solely on homeownership products. “The important thing is volume and great places – and you don’t get great places with only one form of tenure,” says Mr Walkley.

Tenure is an area where there may be a familiar criticism waiting for Homes England. Of the various funding streams at his disposal, only a tiny fraction (£2bn of grant, with conditions yet to be announced) is earmarked for social rent. But the key aim of his agency is not tenure, it is about what he describes as “volume” and “pace”. In a nutshell, this is a game about overall numbers of housebuilding.

Mr Henderson says his experience is that Homes England is willing to be led by the sector on tenure.

“It’s not about being tenure blind necessarily, but there is sensible flexibility,” he says. “Where we have a credible, well-worked-through plan based on the local market needs, Homes England is open to listening to that.”

Overall, following years of declining engagement with grant programmes among the larger housing associations, the mood music from the sector is more positive than it has been for some time about its relationship with the delivery arm of government. The new approach brings both sides to the table.

As Juliet was to eventually discover, names sometimes do matter. It is to be hoped that the sector’s love affair with the government’s new delivery agency has a happier ending.

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