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Homes England to hire regional directors as part of new model
Homes England will hire regional directors as part of a “stronger” regional model it plans to develop over the next year, delegates at a conference have heard.
Homes England to hire regional directors as part of new model #UKhousingHomes England will hire regional directors as part of a “stronger” regional model it plans to develop over the next year, delegates at a conference have heard #UKhousingThe new hires are likely to be based in five regions that will be bigger than the combined authority areas, though each will work with the mayors.
Pat Ritchie, interim chair of Homes England, told delegates at the Housing Community Summit in Liverpool that the regional directors will “have the clout to be able to influence and make decisions about investment on behalf of their region”.
“Those regional teams will have affordable housing people, they’ll have people who can work on land,” she said during a panel discussion on partnerships to rebuild sector capacity.
“They’ll have people who make decisions about investment. They’ll work closely with the [National Housing] bank.”
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Regional pipelines, land and skills will all be a key part of the regional directors’ role, Ms Ritchie added.
This comes after Homes England’s former interim chief executive told Inside Housing that the agency would need to evolve in the context of greater devolution.
Speaking in March, Eamonn Boylan said there will be a need for “dedicated delivery models” as the government seeks to build new towns, and the agency could play a key role in land assembly and derisking before these are set up.
At the Housing 2025 conference in June, panellists discussed the need for Homes England to make devolution central in its new Affordable Homes Programme.
Changes to Treasury Green Book which will bring in “place-based business cases” are also set to come in next year.
Plus, next year will see the launch of the National Housing Bank, a subsidiary of Homes England that will have £16bn of public investment over 10 years and aims to build more than 500,000 new homes.
Ms Ritchie told the panel that the bank will eventually become self-financing and will provide a mixture of loans, equity, guarantees and SME loans.
She said Homes England is looking at cashflow with SMEs and a range of other measures to make it easier to develop.
“What it brings is an ability for Homes England to invest quickly, to invest more flexibly,” Ms Ritchie said.
“Our delegations will be greater in the bank than they currently are.”
She stressed that the bank is part of the agency’s wider investment in affordable housing. For example, it will look at low-cost loans to housing associations which potentially are not able to borrow because of how they are capitalised at the moment.
When pressed by panel host Kirsty Wark, a journalist and presenter, on how quickly the agency wants to move from application to acceptance, Ms Ritchie said she could not give a figure.
“Quicker than we are now, as quickly as possible,” Ms Ritchie said, adding that it depends on delegations and complexity.
When the bank launches next year its investment strategy will set out the different types of investment available.
“We already do a lot of this type of work,” Ms Ritchie said. “What we’ll do with the bank will be [to] really scale that up – do it in a more flexible, blended way.”
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